


How The Story Goes

by everytuesday



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: A series of unfortunate events AU, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Eventual Happy Ending, Fake Character Death, Future Fic, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kid Fic, Multi, and when i say happy ending i MEAN happy ending, off-screen character deaths, references to transphobia and homophobia, to the point that it's no longer tonally consistent with the books
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-29
Updated: 2019-07-16
Packaged: 2020-02-09 16:10:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 44,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18641545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everytuesday/pseuds/everytuesday
Summary: “For Eliot -- Darling, Dearest, Dead.”Quentin sets out to find Eliot’s missing children.(A Series of Unfortunate Events AU where Quentin plays the Lemony Snicket to Eliot’s Beatrice, but I promise there’s a happier ending.)~complete~





	1. Part the First

**Author's Note:**

> This is set in what I’m gonna pretend is a viable possibility for...  
> *spins wheel*  
> Timeline 14!
> 
> Quentin obviously isn’t dead (and won’t be dying; spoilers I guess?) in this fic and there’s a happy ending, so there’s that already working against canon. I did a little bit of hand-waving with it all. Most things happened like they did it canon through the end of Season 3, with some minor differences. Yes, this timeline lasted into Season 3. Yes, it was still reset by Jane. Yes, there is an explanation.
> 
> Eternal gratitude to @livepasthope on tumblr for beta-ing.

_The story of Fray, Eliza, and Margo Waugh is not yet complete, but from what I’ve been able to uncover, I’m sorry to say this is not a happy tale. If you like to read about epic battles and magic quests where the heroes always win, you might be better off picking up another story._

_The misfortunes of the Waugh children began because of events that took place long before they were ever born, but those are a kind of grown-up story that doesn’t bear repeating in this book, or any other book for that matter. All this is to say that nothing that happened to them could have been stopped, unless perhaps an especially merciful god stepped in, but in my experience those types of gods a few and far between._

_Fray, El, and Margo were clever, charming, and much like their father, they had a deep, powerful spark of magic within them. “Magic” is sometimes used to describe things as “exciting” or “wonderful,” but here it refers to literal magic, the kind that that can rewind time, turn someone invisible, or mend small objects. The kind that, though I have spent many long years wishing otherwise, comes from pain._

\-- Excerpt from “ _The Flight from the Farm_ ”, first book in the “ _Wandering and Wonder_ ” series, by Q. M. Coldwater

* * *

As Quentin gets off the plane and steps foot in Indiana, he reaches unconsciously for the letter tucked away in his bag. In the past three days it experienced its share of crumpling, uncrumpling, folding, and refolding as he processed the last message he’ll ever receive from Eliot.

Even after their falling out, Quentin believed they’d eventually find their way back to each other. Not right away, but maybe after another decade, when the grief of losing their friends subsided, Quentin’s need for vengeance had been sated, and Eliot’s children were grown.

But the letter ripped that future away from him and left him with a quest that threatens to break his heart every time he thinks about it for too long, or when he considers the possibility that he’ll fail Eliot. Again.

_Dear Quentin,_

_I’m sorry._

_If you’re receiving this letter, Fen and I have been dead for exactly one year. The Beast was always going to catch up to us eventually and it looks like our time ran out._

_Our kids are still out there. They’re alive and should be living with my father in Indiana. Sending them there is maybe worst thing I’ve done in my life, but they'llbe safe and hopefully it’ll have been long enough for the Beast to stop looking._

_I worked a blood magic spell that keeps them completely hidden from everyone and everything magical, even you. With me dead and now a year gone by, it won’t last much longer. You should be able to find them once the magic fades. Please find them. Look after them. I know it’s unfair of me to ask this of you, and maybe a little cruel, but you’re all I’ve got left._

_I hope you can forgive me._

_Love,_

_Eliot_

Also included in the envelope was an index card with an address labeled “the farm” and three school pictures of smiling children. Quentin didn’t realize the youngest existed until the last picture had fallen into his hand. When he’d last seen Eliot, there’d been two kids: Fray and Eliza. Now, it seemed, Eliot had a third daughter:

Margo Waugh. Her name broke the dam and sent Quentin into hysterics, sitting in his apartment with the letter and the picture clasped in his hand, sobs wracking his body until he could barely breathe.

Margo’s school picture is now carefully tucked into his wallet with the other two, more than a little wrinkled and tear-stained.

Quentin rents a car from the airport and drives several hours out of the city to the small farm town Eliot grew up in. He doesn’t have a plan beyond his grief-fueled determination to track down the kids. If that means showing up unannounced on the doorstep of the Waugh residence, he’ll do that.

Quentin finds the address and drives down a dirt road for half a mile before coming upon the farmhouse. It lacks any of the charm Quentin would’ve imagined a farmhouse to possess, rather it’s a squashed, rectangle-shaped building painted an ugly off-white color.

The farmhouse fails to hold Quentin’s attention for long, as several hundred yards behind it lies a barn that appears as though something twisted around itself, like wringing out a rag. It’s still standing, remarkably, but every board in the structure looks splintered in half.

Quentin slams the car door shut and sprints to the house, knocking several times and not getting an answer. He tries the doorknob, finds it locked, and after a half second of deliberation, he decides _fuck it_ and opens it with a spell.

The house is empty. No furniture, no signs of life except for the mouse dropping on the floor. Dust collects in the window sills.

Quentin jogs behind the house out to the barn, and finds nothing useful beyond the obvious _this barn was twisted apart by magic_.

There are a number of explanations for it, but the only thought in Quentin’s mind is that this is the product of the Beast and the farmhouse was abandoned in light of grizzly murders of three teenagers and their grandfather.

And try as he might, he can’t put the fear out of his mind. He drives into town, finds the only diner, and forces himself up to the counter to order a coffee and a side of eggs.

The waitress is probably early forties and has the kind of haircut that screams PTO mom, so he pins her for someone who might know something as exciting as a recent brutal murder in town.

“Excuse me,” he asks. “I was just passing through but… Do you know anything about what happened to the barn out near the highway? I got lost and had to turn around in the driveway and I saw it looked-- completed wrecked. Weirdest thing I’ve seen in my life.”

The waitresses face falls, “God, it was so awful.”

“What happened?” Quentin’s voice is barely above a whisper, as all breath leaves his lungs and his heart plummets.

“Like that family hasn’t been through enough,” the woman sitting beside him at the counter mutters. Quentin glances at her sees she’s about the same age as the waitress and looks even more like a soccer mom. She takes his look as permission to continue, “First that son of theirs goes wild all throughout high school, takes off after graduation and is never seen again. We all thought ‘good riddance,’ you know? But then he dies and dumps his kids on poor Michael. Right after Joyce died too. It’s just… It’s a shame.”

“Cathy,” the waitress admonishes. “Come on, they’re just kids. I get they were brats, but the oldest was what, fourteen?”

“You knew them?” Quentin asks, finding his voice again. Cathy-the-soccer-mom’s tone didn’t suggest a gory tragedy, so either she’s much more callous than he imagines, or something else happened, and he’s hanging onto the latter option like a lifeline.

“I’m neighborly with their grandfather and the middle one, what was her name… Ellen? Elizabeth-something? She was in the same class as my daughter. She was always just… Like her dad. He had this reputation for being a little odd, _you know_?” she looks meaningfully between Quentin and the waitress and Quentin knows exactly what she means, but would much rather she say it out loud and admit to being a bigoted asshole. “And I know they’re just children, but it’s the same with them! I swear, whenever I ran into those kids, they just felt so… They just weren’t normal children. And after what Michael says they did to that barn...”

“Oh, Cathy, don’t start with that” the waitress interrupts. “They’re just kids. Seriously. There’s no way they destroyed that barn, no matter what Michael claims. He’s a grieving crackpot. And this gentlemen doesn’t need to hear all the small town drama,” she turns to Quentin, “I am sorry, dear. Cathy loves her gossip.”

Cathy rolls her eyes, drops a twenty on the table, and gathers up her things. “It’s just so odd. The whole thing, you know?”

The waitress smiles placatingly at her, while Quentin scrambles to find a way to keep her talking. She walks out the door before he can get his thoughts together, so he downs his coffee, drops his own money on the table, and starts to follow.

As Quentin leaves the diner, someone steps in behind him and taps him on the shoulder, “Excuse me.”

Quentin turns around. There’s a man there, about the same age as him, with dark hair and a curious expression

“How’d you know Eliot Waugh?” the man asks and Quentin reels.

“Um, I’m sorry, I don’t-- I mean, who?”

The man snorts at Quentin's fumbling. “I saw you in there… That’s not an interested stranger look.”

Quentin hesitates, but there’s a warmth of his eyes that makes Quentin want to trust him. “Yeah, okay. I knew him. Why do you care?”

“I’m Taylor,” he holds out his hand, which Quentin hesitantly takes. “I went to high school with Eliot. I met the kids a few times while they lived here and I can tell you Cathy’s a lying ass. They’re good kids.”

“What happened to them?" Quentin asks, desperate for any scrap of information. "Where are they?”

“They’re fine, as far as I know. After the barn thing, there was a whole child protective services investigation and the kids went to live with someone else.”

Relief washes over him, mixing with a worry as he realizes he’ll have to track them down somewhere new.

Taylor appears to anticipate this, so he adds, “Michael Waugh would probably know where they went. He lives in an apartment a few blocks from here. I could give you the address.”

“Thanks,” Quentin says. “Could you-- Could you tell me more about them? I hadn’t seen the oldest two since they were babies. Margo wasn’t even born yet. How were they?”

Taylor’s expression softens, “Like I said, I only met them a few times. Had them over for dinner, told them stories about their dad in high school. They’re good kids. Confused and scared and _sad_ , but they’re good. I just don’t get what Eliot was thinking.”

“Sending them to live with his dad?” Quentin is still troubled by that too, blood magic or not.

“Michael Waugh is a homophobic dickwad. And those kids are _so_ much like Eliot, especially Eliza. The other two stick up for her, which is enough to make the average person in town think they’re strange and dangerous. And somehow capable of bringing a full-sized barn down with their minds,” Taylor laughs. “It’s bullshit, but if they did, Michael certainly had it coming.”

“Was anyone hurt when it came down?”

“No; just his wallet and his pride. The barn had been there for a century; it was a big loss,” Taylor says. “Hence the apartment. Anyway, if you need anything, let me know. I hope you find them.”

Twenty minutes later, Quentin sits in the parking lot of the apartment complex and jots down everything he recollects about what he got from Taylor, Cathy, and the waitress onto a notepad. He glances up at the building every few times, trying to figure out how to even approach it.

He doesn’t want to admit he’s Eliot’s… _something_. He doesn’t want to corner him. He wants honest information and to get that--

Quentin tilts his head at this notebook and an idea occurs to him.

Steeling himself, he heads to the door and knocks three times.He’s greeted by a withered old man who scowls at him, “Can I help you?”

“Mr Waugh, my name is Quentin Coldwater. I’m working on an article about your grandchildren for my paper; I was hoping I could--”

He swings open the door, to Quentin’s surprise.

“Want to get the chance to get my story straight,” he grunts. He shuffles back into the apartment and motions for Quentin to follow him into the living room. He settles into a recliner and nods to the couch across from him, which Quentin takes a seat in and pulls out his phone to record.

“Mr. Waugh, your grandchildren came to live with you approximately one year ago?”

“About that time, yeah. Apparently my son and his _wife_ \--” he laughs at that. “Don’t know how that happened. He was a fucking queer when he lived under my roof and if I didn’t scare him straight, I don’t know what--”

Quentin bites back his anger and clears his throat. “I’m sorry, Mr. Waugh, but I’d like to use your direct quotes as much as possible and my publication doesn’t allow me to print slurs.”

Michael narrows his eyes at Quentin. “What paper are you writing for?”

In the beat that follows, Quentin realizes he never bothered to name his fake paper. Michael narrows his eyes and Quentin deflects, “Do you know where the kids went after they were taken into state custody?”

“Some woman in Idaho. Janet, I think her name was? Apparently she was second-choice for guardianship.”

_Margo?_

“Thank you for your time, Mr. Waugh,” Quentin says. He starts to head for the door, but something turns him back around. “Eliot was a good man. I don’t know how he managed to stay so good with someone as cruel as you for a father, but he was. Getting to love him was the best part of my life and I’m fucking delighted that his kids are as far away from you as they can get.”

Quentin slams the door on his way out and Mr. Waugh is left gaping behind him.

* * *

_As the Waugh children watched the small town disappear behind them, they felt great relief that they would never again see their grandfather, nor any of the people from that town. But they also felt a great deal of confusion as to where they were headed next, as they had never met or even heard of Janet before. I confess, readers, I’m not entirely sure how her location came to the attention of the Waugh parents._

_And though all evidence would suggest the children’s time with Janet was not an unhappy one, it does not have a particularly happy ending._

_I did warn you._

Excerpt from the last chapter of “ _The Flight from the Farm_ ” by Q. M. Coldwater

* * *

Quentin sleeps in the town’s tiny motel that night and then gets on the next flight out to Boise the following morning. In Boise, he finds another empty house and neighbors who tell him that Janet moved in a rush to New York after her foster children had been taken from her. After a bit of digging, he locates a forwarding address and he gets back on a plane to New York.

He’s greeted in the hallway of a very nice apartment building with a slap across the face from an enraged Margo Hanson, “I thought you were dead!”

“Wait, what? How do you know--? _Margo_?” Quentin stammers as Margo drags him to her in a hug.

She looks the same as ever. She’s aged in the past decade, sure, and her fashion sense has grown up with her, but she’s still Margo. She’s still unmistakably  _herself._

She pushes the door behind her open and Quentin follows her inside to the brightly lit apartment. Margo settles herself on the couch and motions for Quentin to join her.

“How did you get back? I thought the Library took your memories.”

“It was Margo,” she says and when Quentin stares blankly at her, she clarifies, “The other one. Eliot naming his kid after me is morbid as all hell, but maybe he knew living in Idaho was the equivalent of being dead for me. Anyway Mini-Margo broke the memory spell the Library put on me when we all got split up.”

“She has that kind of power?” When he’d first learned about the memory spells, he’d done everything he could to find a solution, but there’d been nothing and even if there had been, he never could have harnessed enough power to channel it.

“Apparently,” Margo says. “Hurt like a bitch and I couldn’t shake out of it before the kids were hauled off by magic CPS. Didn’t know we had that, honestly. Anyway, now I’m here. Useless. And Eliot’s kids are MIA.”

“It’s not your fault,”Quentin says. “She used raw, untrained magic to break you out of it. There had to have been side effects and--”

Margo winces and closes her eyes, pinching the bridge of her nose and letting a quiet groan. She shakes her head and re-opens her eyes, but her expression is tight, muscles pinched together and she’s still clearly in pain.

Quentin starts to reach to her, but she waves him off. “What happened on your end of things? Last I saw you, you looked pretty dead.”

The last time he’d seen Margo was after their seven keys quest.

They restored magic from Blackspire, only for the Library to appear out of nowhere to take control of it. And then, also out of nowhere, _the Beast_ appeared, as if he hadn’t been killed by Quentin years ago. He seemed stronger, too, and certainly angrier.

He targeted Quentin first, leaving him a bloodied mess on the floor before his friends and a small army of pissed off Librarians had attacked.

Eliot dragged Quentin off in an attempt to keep him away from the thick of the danger, before he planned on returning to the fight. But that hadn’t happened because--

“Eliza saved us. She magicked Eliot and I back to Whitespire before we could do anything and she-- She was _Jane Chatwin_ this whole time.”

“Our Eliza?” Margo narrows her eyes. “Annoying British mom friend, always hanging around offering life-altering advice, the chick Eliot named his fucking kid after, Eliza?”

“She was creating time loops to stop the Beast. We’ve done this thirteen times before and every other time we died. This is the closest we’ve gotten, and he still came back somehow. She told us he’d gotten too powerful to risk stopping, so she reset the timeline and fucked off to try again. But we’re still _here_ , so… “ Quentin waves his hand, helpless. “We all got back to Earth. I tried to find out what happened to you, but I didn’t know if you were dead or alive and even once I knew about the memory spells they'd put on the survivors, I couldn’t find you. I guess Eliot did, somehow. Or had an idea.”

“I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, Q, I’m glad you’re not dead, but… Why the hell weren’t you with him and Fen when they died? And it took you a year to get in the game? What happened?”

The guilt that had long settled in Quentin’s gut rages to the surface, threatening to choke him. He’s asked himself that question constantly. _Why wasn’t I there? Why didn't I know what was happening?_ And he knows why and that makes part of this his fault, no matter how much blame can be placed on the Beast. He’s the reason Eliot and Fen didn’t have more back-up.

“When we first got back, I lost myself in trying to get revenge, trying to find anything to kill the Beast for good. Eliot and Fen had their kids and they thought I was taking it too far and they cut ties," Quentin fumbles around his pocket for the letter. “This was how I found out they were dead.”

Margo takes it and her eyebrows knit together as she scans over it, mouth pressing into a fine line. She looks up at Quentin, composed as ever, but he can see the emotion bubbling under the surface in her eyes. She breaks off in a cry, getting up out of her seat, turning her back to Quentin as she doubles over. He reaches out to steady her, but she waves his hands away.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Quentin says. “We’ll figure something out; I know it’s a lot but--”

“It’s not _that_ ,” Margo growls.

Quentin steps back, startled at how unemotional her voice is. It’s just... pain.

“Whatever Mini-Margo did to get my memories back, it doesn’t last. The longest I’ve been me is two weeks. Sometimes it’s just hours, and then I’ll be Janet again. You’re lucky you caught me on a good day, Q. But I’m out of here before too long and Janet’s gonna be pissed.”

“This isn’t-- You go back?”

Margo nods, still doubled over.

“We can figure out how to undo it all. I can help.”

“I’ve tried that for the last year. Even if I had more time, I don’t think there’s much to be _done_ . I don’t know what kind of power that kid has, but it’s nothing I can create.” She looks up at him and the warmth in her smile shatters Quentin’s heart. “Mini-Margo is _amazing_., I’d die for any of those kids and they’re still in trouble, so you better get the hell out there and find them.”

“There has to be something I can do,” Quentin says, catching her hands in his.

She pecks him on the lips, her smile slipping away. “You should leave before Janet finds a strange man in her apartment. She’s got a hair trigger, that one.”

“Margo--”

The air around Margo shifts and shimmers until Margo isn’t Margo anymore and a completely different woman stands exactly where she stood.

Janet blinks a few times, adjusting to her surroundings. She registers Quentin and yanks her hands away from him, her eyes wide and angry. “Who the fuck are you? What are you doing in my apartment?”

Quentin opens his mouth, but her eyes are so confused and unrecognizing of him that he thinks better of it. He raises his hands and backs toward the door. “I’m sorry. It was open; I got turned around.”

“Get the fuck out or I’m calling the cops,” Janet says, backing away toward the kitchen counter, where she grabs a knife out of a drawer and waves it at Quentin. “Now!”

Quentin slips back out the door, muttering apologies until the door closes behind him. He stares at it for a long moment before he takes a deep breath and closes his eyes.

* * *

_Margo Waugh had begun to suspect the spark inside of her that made tornadoes twist apart farmhouses was no ordinary spark. Had she had the time needed, perhaps this moment would have been the one where she realized exactly what she could do._

_But she didn’t have that time, because as soon as she finished memorizing the incantation and hand placements, the doorbell rang, and with it came another tragedy._

_Janet answered the door, where a man in a suit greeted her. He spoke quietly and Margo watched as Janet’s face became grave. She nodded her head a few times, then let the man inside, where he quickly spotted Margo and her siblings and approached them._

_“I’m afraid there was a mistake,” the man said. “You were never supposed to come here. I’ve come to take you where you’re supposed to be. It’s a mix-up in the system, it happens sometimes. But you’ll be safe where you go next.”_

_Fray, El, and Margo were told to go to the car, and while their mother had always taught them to mind their manners, they felt the situation rendered those manners unnecessary and refused the instruction, in colorful language that would make a centaur blush._

_“Come on, kids,” Janet tried her best to calm them down, “I don’t like it either but--”_

_Margo held out her hand, worked the spell while she repeated the incantation as best she could remember._

_Janet froze, and then fell away and in her place stood Margo Hanson. A king, a powerful magician, the dearest friend of their father, and the woman that Margo Waugh had been named after._

_It should have been a moment of great joy, of reunions and tears and long hugs._

_But instead Margo Waugh found herself picked up and carried out of the house, along with her siblings, while Margo Hanson let out a cry, now experiencing the worst migraine that she had ever felt in her life._

_By the time she could open her eyes again, they were gone._

\- Excerpt from “ _The Woman With Two Lives_ ”, second book in the “ _Wandering and Wonder_ ” series, by Q. M. Coldwater

* * *

The book deal happens after a bad night in a bar and a hook-up with a literary agent named Lyle, who gives great head and is also incredibly nosy. Quentin wakes up to a stranger going through his laptop and babbling about how rough-yet-compelling his notes on the Waugh kids are. He offers to help Quentin get it published and hands him a business card between putting his clothes back on.

At first, Quentin says no, thank you very much. But as the months pass without any leads, he realizes that magic CPS isn’t a coherent thing to track down and searching for your dead lover’s children isn’t a very lucrative gig.

Quentin tries to get in contact with every non-Library-affiliated magician he can, but there’s not many left he trusts. He’s been banned from Brakebills; Dean Fogg threatened to blast him into next week if he tried to ransack the library again.

He gets in touch with Taylor, who suggests he talk to a few other locals in town who knew the kids. He spends a week in Indiana, growing to hate the residents of Eliot’s small hometown more than he thought possible. After that, he takes a trip back to Boise and finds teachers and neighbors and classmates, all willing to talk about the kids, especially when there’s the promise of a shiny newspaper article with their name on it.

Quentin reads over his notes and has to admit it wouldn’t be a bad book. Depressing as hell for what he’s sure will wind up being a children’s novel, but that’s not the point. There’s a chance, however small, that if the kids are still out there, they’ll stumble across the book and try to find him.

He calls Lyle.

Lyle asks Quentin for manuscripts and Quentin cleans up his notes, takes out any explicit mention of Fillory, and sends them off. They get a hit with a publisher a few months later and Quentin requests to use “Q. M. Coldwater,” rather than his full name, because it seems simpler and he doesn’t want to be especially known for his work. He doesn’t want to do signings or any form of publicity either, something Lyle argues with him over through a series of back and forth texts over several days.

But Quentin is busy and trying to do the actual work of finding the kids and at a certain point he stops replying to messages.

The more he talks to people, the more he feels like he actually knows these kids. Trying to find them isn’t just about Eliot anymore. These three deserve some semblance of a life and he’s sure wherever they are now isn’t giving them that.

Fray was the only one he remembered with any clarity. As a toddler, she’d been a giggly, happy child whenever she was in Fen’s arms, but always resisted being passed around to her various honorary aunts and uncles. She screamed especially loud whenever Josh tried to hold her, so Josh almost never did. As an orphaned teenager, everyone who encountered Fray seemed to characterize her as the mature, level-headed one of the bunch, though she had a mean streak when it came to anyone speaking ill of her siblings. Quentin can’t begin to imagine how much pressure she must be under, with her parents gone and her two siblings her sole responsibility. She must be very brave.

Fen had given birth to Eliza shortly before they had fled Fillory from the Beast. Quentin’s only memory of her was as the five of them escaped across the Neitherlands to the Earth fountain and Eliot had little Eliza tucked into a sling on his chest while Fen held Fray on her hip. Now it seems Eliza usually goes by El and is loud and angry and almost everyone he’s met regards her as the true problem child, desperately in need of fixing by a stern adult.

And Margo, the baby he hadn’t known existed. Mini-Margo seems to be just as mouthy and brash as her namesake, though her age and overall demeanor keep her from getting in trouble for it. “She’s such a sweet little girl!” more than one person has said, while attempting to justify something that Quentin regards as vaguely horrific, like knocking another kid’s tooth out.

The first book hits the shelves and they’re successful enough that he has money to live off, and then some, so he gets a decent apartment and can properly pay for plane tickets. He can also stop robbing ATMS for grocery money, which is neat.

They also gain something of a fanbase too. Quentin is too busy to spend much time thinking about it, but he realizes in the middle of doing his own research on the kids that people are talking about his books. There’s a subreddit and tumblr blogs and uncomfortably named twitter accounts.

It’s not just weird fantasy fans that the book reaches. About three months after the first book comes out, he gets a call from Henry Fogg, inviting Quentin back to Brakebills for a meeting.

Quentin goes, not sure what to expect.

“You’re trying to find Eliot’s children,” Fogg says, steepling his fingers. “And you’re writing books about their traumatic childhoods.”

“It’s getting attention. Maybe they’ll find it, somehow. I don’t know. I’m at the end of my rope and this seems like the only thing I can do.”

“They won’t find the books and you’re not going to find them anytime soon,” Fogg says. “I know where they are.”

“Are they _here_?”

“They’re in Fillory, which I know because before they were in Fillory, they were with me for four months. And before they were with me, they were staying with members of the McCallister family. I’m sorry to say that our magical fostering agencies aren’t really about charity as much as they’re about accumulating power, even power in the form of children.”

“They wanted Margo.”

“Margo? No,” Fogg shakes his head. “Eliza is the child of most interest, given she’s a traveler.”

“She can travel? Fuck, that’s-- That’s why the Beast went after them. It wasn’t cleaning up loose ends. It was El.”

The realization hangs in the air and Quentin wonders what he’ll have to do if he wants to protect her. Eliot was ready to send her to live with his abusive father to save her life. Quentin has to be ready to do anything for that kid and when he thinks about it, he’s certain he would.

“How do we get to Fillory?” Quentin asks.

“We don’t. We wait for them to get back.”

“The Beast is in Fillory. And he's trying to track down the one traveler--”

“Do you think we didn’t take precautions? They weren’t just sitting here for a semester, Quentin.”

“So you let them study? Henry, they’re _teenagers_. I wasn’t ready for the kind of magic you teach here when I was a first year, and I was twenty-three. You can’t seriously--”

“They’re not ready for anything that’s happened in their lives. But Margo has already been casting spells at a second year level without supervision. Eliza needed to learn to control her ability, which Professor Sunderland was more than happy to help her with.”

“And Fray?”

“She wants to protect her siblings. I could hardly let her sit back and watch. She’s not powerful, but she’s got a good heart and she’d do anything for them.”

Every idea Quentin has to get to Fillory to chase after them is quickly shot down by Fogg. Quentin has a target on his back. The Beast might already know they’re there, but if he doesn’t, Quentin’s presence will certainly alert the Beast to them. All that’s left to do is get ready for whenever they return.

* * *

_Over the weeks following their rescue by Dean Henry Fogg, the Waugh children adjusted to their new lives as students in a graduate school. Or rather, young teenagers living in a school meant to be attended by those in their twenties. They didn’t go to classes, but they met with professors and they learned as much as they could. And among all the spellwork, they learned about their father’s time there, when he hadn’t been a king of magical world, but instead a rather dashing grad student with an impeccable sense of fashion and a love of elaborate parties. Stories of his exploits still circulated the campus years later._

_While wandering the halls or lurking about the library, they were often stopped by students who would ask, “Aren’t you a little young to be grad students?”_

_To which Fray would reply “We’re not students”_

_And El would deadpan, "Accidental de-aging spell."_

_While Margo would clutch her chest and cry, “Thank you! You’re too kind!”_

\- Excerpt from “ _The Sorcery School_ ”, third book in the “ _Wandering and Wonder_ ” series, by Q. M. Coldwater

* * *

For the next few months, Quentin focusing all his efforts on narrating the kids’ time with the McCallisters and Fogg as best he can piece together. Working on the book is literally the only thing he has left and trying to get all the details right makes him feel like whenever the kids come back, he’ll know enough about them to not be a totally incompetent guardian.

The second book is “flying off the shelves” as Lyle phrases it and while Quentin doesn’t dare to check reviews or the apparent fanbase, Lyle assures him it’s popular with all the right demographics and the third book will be much anticipated.

Quentin spends most of his time back in the physical cottage, so changed since the brief time he lived there over a decade ago. There are students and teachers who helped Fogg smuggle the children around campus and hide from the McCallisters, and they’re happy to provide him with whatever bits of information they can remember.

He gathers what he has, formats it into a manuscript, and does his best to not end it with _And I have no idea where the fuck they are and this might be the last book since they could die in Fillory._

Quentin spends one last weekend back at his apartment finishing the draft before sending it into Lyle.

He plans to go back to Brakebills and work with Sunderland to learn as much as he can about traveling and how to help El manage it despite being an emotionally distraught fourteen year old.

No, that wasn’t right.

Fifteen year old.

Her birthday was a few months ago. El’s fifteen, Fray’s sixteen, and little Margo is now thirteen. Jesus.

Quentin shakes himself and is about to start up a new round of emails to his editor when he notices the edges of the study door glow with a soft yellow light. Not light from the hall outside, no, this is magic.

He slips out of his chair and fumbles to put on his shoes, never taking his eyes off the glow. He shoves his phone, keys, and wallet into his pocket like he’s taking an evening stroll and not about to walk through a portal into another world.

A rational part of his brain suggests he find another way out of the study or at least try to sense where the magic was coming from, but he shushes that part quiet.

The far bigger part of his brain, the desperate part, urges him to go, tells him that whatever lies beyond it will be better than the endless waiting he’s been doing the past months. He listens to that part, swings open the door, and steps through into the light.

* * *

_In light of the insurmountable amount of tragedy that had happened in Fray’s life, even Fray herself forgot, from time to time, that she was barely sixteen years old._

_But she_ was _very young and in her final moments, she remembered that in any other life she would be worrying about school and prom and college applications. She felt a final burst of anger that instead she was here, collapsed on a forest floor hundreds of miles away from the family for which she’d gone to her death._

_When Fray opened her eyes, an elevator door was opening before her and she was being greeted by a man in a suit. He reached out to take her hand and when she looked into his eyes, she found that she knew him. She had seen him before, somewhere, perhaps in an old picture hanging on the wall, always there but seldom noticed._

_“Hey,” the man in the suit said, with a kind of softness Fray hadn’t heard directed toward her in a long time. “I’m so sorry you’re here.”_

_“I’m dead, aren’t I?” Fray asked as she stepped out of the elevator._

_“Yes. Just for a few minutes, Fray, you’ll get to go back. Your siblings still need you and you’ve got a lot to do. But while we’re here, I have a couple things you should know.”_

_Fray nodded, leaning in to listen. The man in the suit glanced around the strange blackness of the room they sat in, then leaned in as well and said, in a voice barely above a whisper, “I’ve never seen your parents down here. And that’s very strange because I make a point of being a familiar face when I can. I have no idea where they were sent after they died, if it wasn’t to me. Look for their books in the Library. I don’t know where the books were moved up top, but if you can find them, get them.”_

_“Are they okay?” Fray asked, unsure of what the man was trying to tell her, but a quiet hope rose in her and she began to ask, “Could they be-- I mean, what if they’re not--?”_

_But the man in the suit cut her off with a quick shake of his head. He looked like he might want to say something, but he seemed to think better of it. He pressed his lips together and finally continued, “Here’s the other thing, and this one’s important: You need to find Quentin Coldwater.”_

\-- Excerpt from “ _The Fairy’s Quest_ ”, fourth book in the “ _Wandering and Wonder_ ” series, by Q. M. Coldwater

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've spend an ungodly amount of time on this fic and I'm nearly done with the first full draft of the second chapter. 
> 
> 1 comment = 1 serotonin


	2. Part the Second

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fray washes some dishes. There's a coming out. Margos take a beach vacation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> general tw for unintentional misgendering

Quentin steps into a big, circular room lined with bookshelves, where three teenagers are waiting for him. They’re older and graver than they were in those smiling school pictures, but Quentin knows without a doubt that these are Eliot’s kids.

Margo kneels on the floor, books spread out around her. Shoulder-length brown hair flops into her face as her hands are too busy casting to push it back. Behind big glasses, her eyes are screwed shut in concentration.

Above her hovers Fray, with dark hair piled onto her head in a messy bun and sharp eyes watching the door as Quentin walks through. She taps Margo’s shoulder and Margo opens her eyes, letting the spell short out and the glow fade from the door behind Quentin.

The last sibling towers over the other two and already has an inch or two on Quentin. El shares Eliot’s nose and curls, with the long, gangly frame of a teenager in the midst of their growth spurt.

“Quentin Coldwater?” Fray sounds uncertain as she asks.

As Quentin moves closer, she straightens, but he can’t stop staring at them. “How did you--?”

“Magic, duh,” Margo grabs Fray’s hand and pulls herself to her feet. “So are you gonna help us or what?”

Quentin stutters a series of vowel sounds, unsure what question he needs to ask first. What brought them here from Fillory, where this place actually is, how they got him here. Perhaps most curious (or distressing; Quentin hasn’t settled on what emotion he’s feeling about it) is how Margo created a portal across dimensions at thirteen years old when he’s not sure even Alice or Julia would’ve attempted magic that complex.

El leans back against the stacks, sizing Quentin up. “If he can’t help, can I suggest Plan B? Let’s just ransack the place until we find them. It’s a library, what’s the worst they can do, give us a fine?”

“We’re in the Library?” Quentin looks around and yeah, that seems a fairly obvious conclusion, given the books everywhere. He notices the frosted glass on the door through which he came in appears to be labeled  _Conference Room_ on the outside. “You-- How did you get here? What are you looking for?”

“Our parents’ books,” Fray says, starting toward the door. “We were hoping you could help us find them, but I have a feeling that’s a longshot.”

 _Of course._ Quentin shakes his head, “I know exactly where they are, you just can’t get them. It’s the Poison Room, all ‘dangerous’ books are shelved there, which means that’s pretty much all of our books.”

“Fuck,” El hisses. “Okay. Well. We have Quentin, so that’s something, right?”

“No, Penny told me--” Fray paces across the space, fingers twitching at her sides. “I can’t leave without them. I have to know.”

“  _Penny_?” Quentin asks, but none of them spare him a glance.

“You won’t even tell us why it’s so important,” El snaps. “I don’t want to read how Mom and Dad died. Sorry, but even if it helps us-- I can’t do that. I don’t want to read the books; we can find another way.”

Fray huffs and keeps pacing. El makes an irritated,  _tsk_ ing sort of sound and pushes away from the bookshelf, “Okay, well, I’m done with this. Sorry, Fray.”

El strides toward Quentin, catches hold of his wrist, and, with a sharp yank, drags him toward Fray and Margo. Margo catches Fray’s hand in hers, then grasps El’s shoulder. Fray opens her mouth to shout something, but the Library disappears around them and is quickly replaced by the middle of an empty city street, lit up only by the traffic light overhead.

“Why would you do that?” Fray shouts. “We have to go back!”

El brushes past Fray to the sidewalk. Margo follows behind and Quentin looks to Fray, who’s close to tears and not moving from the middle of the street. He starts to formulate some sort of comforting phrase, but then realizes   _what the hell?_ and turns back to El.

“I thought you didn’t know-- And to travel with all of us-- How did you just do that?”

El holds up a hand, revealing a set of runes tattooed across the knuckles. Quentin opens his mouth to ask  _How?_ but El rambles on, “I lied about how much Sunderland’s stuff was actually helping me. Trust no bitch, you know? And then once we were in Fillory, the fairies were weirdly into trying to help me figure it out. They kind of hate the Beast trampling over their world as much as the next guy.”

“Fairies?”

El looks about to answer when Fray shoves past Quentin onto the sidewalk and gets up in El’s face, “You don’t get to make decisions for everyone else! I don’t care if you can teleport us to the moon whenever you want, we talk things out.”

“Quentin said no one could get to the books without dying and I don’t want to die, so I don’t see why we should’ve stuck around.”

“Okay,” Quentin steps between them and they both startle backward a step. “So. This is a lot for a conversation happening on a public sidewalk in the middle of the night. Can we go inside, maybe? I don’t know where we are, but I have an apartment we can go to.”

“I’m sorry, Fray,” El says, sincerely. “We should go, Quentin’s right.”

El holds out her hand and Fray takes a breath before accepting it. Quentin feels fingers slip around his wrist and the street disappears.

Now, they stand in the living room of his apartment.

“How’d you--?”

“Travelers are psychic,” El glances around the cozy living room and kitchen, then makes herself at home on the couch while adding, off-hand, “Your wards are kind of shit, by the way.”

“This is... nice,” Margo says, ambling over to to the couch and pushing El’s legs over so there’s room for her to sit.

“Thank you, Quentin,” Fray says, turning to him.

Quentin tries to figure out how to tell them as far as he’s concerned it’s theirs. All the money is from the books. Which they’re going to have to learn about, sooner or later. Quentin feels nervous energy pouring off him and his hands gesture around as he tries to think of something to  _say_.

“Who told you to go to the Library?”

“Some dude named Penny,” Margo says. “Old friend of our dad’s. He filled us in on a bunch of stuff when Fray died last week.”

“You-- died?”

“For like twenty minutes,” Fray shrugs, either unphased or trying very hard to look unphased (and Quentin suspects it’s the latter). “Could we--? I’m sorry, I know you’re trying to help and this is your home but could we have a moment?”

“Oh! Yeah, sure,” Quentin nearly trips over himself trying to get to his room.

He leaves the door just cracked, then sits on the edge of the bed and texts Margo,  _WE GOT THEM. THEY’RE SAFE_. He has no idea when to expect a reply; when he’d called a few days ago he’d gotten her voicemail, meaning Janet was still at the wheel.

Through the door, he can hear them talking in hushed voices. He resists the urge to eavesdrop and after a few minutes, Fray pokes her head into his room. She’s flushed and her eyes are red-rimmed, but her voice is composed when she asks, “Quentin, do you have anything we could eat? It’s been like six months since we’ve had human food.”

“God, yeah, of course. You can have whatever you want,” Quentin scrambles upright and follows Fray back into the main room. He pulls almost everything he owns out of the pantry and the fridge and stands back to let them go at it.

El immediately goes for a bag of doritos and returns to the couch, sitting with her legs crossed and shoveling chips into her mouth. Fray gives a disapproving look, but sets to occupying herself by pulling random items together, tasting things as she goes.

Margo tugs on Quentin’s arm and pulls him aside, sitting down in a chair. “Do you know if the other Margo is okay? I fixed her; I remember doing the spell. I thought she’d find you.”

Quentin swallows, crouching down next to her.

“Is she dead?” Margo asks. There’s a matter-of-fact tone in her voice that chills Quentin to the bone. She frowns, and in a smaller, less certain voice, she asks, “Did  _I_ kill her? She was hurting when we were taken away. I tried not to think about it but--”

“No,” Quentin says quickly. “No, no you didn’t do anything wrong. You broke some of the Janet part away, but it keeps coming back. She’s not herself very often.”

“Maybe I can fix her again,” Margo says.

“Maybe,” Quentin agrees, but he hasn’t the faintest idea what a second try might do to her.

Fray drifts over from the kitchen with a sandwich in hand and a bowl of soup in the other. She passes the bowl over to Margo, then wanders to look at the bookcase where all of his extra copies of  _Wandering and Wonder_ reside. When she picks up one of the books, Quentin shifts in his seat, trying to phrase his explanation in his head before he says it out loud.

“Um, so, about that,” he says and Fray looks at him, raising an eyebrow. “While I was looking for you, I started writing down everything I found out. And then… it’s complicated, but someone offered to publish them and I thought maybe if they got big enough you’d know someone was looking for you.”

Fray flips the book open, stopping on what Quentin knows to be the dedication page. She stares at it a long moment, then looks at him, a dare in her eye as she asks, “‘To Eliot’?”

“Yeah, I-- Your dad had a letter sent to me about a year after he died, asking me to go find you in Indiana. So it seemed like… I don’t know. Fitting, I guess?”

“Dad asked you find us?” El asks, leaning in and setting aside the bag of chips.

“Yeah, but you were already gone. It took me awhile to catch up. And I guess in the end, you found me, so it didn’t really matter.”

Fray flips a few pages on, starting to read the actual book. Quentin’s heart rate picks up.

El peels off the couch toward the bookcase. Her fingers trail over the spines before she settles on one, pulls it from the shelf, and grimaces at the cover. “Is that supposed to me?”

El flips the book around to Quentin and jabs a finger at the tiny blond girl with pigtails on the front cover of  _The Woman With Two Lives,_ before setting it back onto the shelf.

“I didn’t really get a say in what the covers looked like, sorry.”

Fray glances up, having thumbed through to the end of the book. She closes it, but folds her arms around it and cradles it against her chest, her thumb brushing back and forth over the cover. “How did you know all this about us? The stuff with our grandpa, the school, the tornado?”

“I interviewed anyone who would let me, back in Indiana. And Boise and at Brakebills. Teachers, kids, parents, the cops, the local librarian, random people who met you on the street. Even your grandfather, who’s a piece of work, by the way. I’m sorry you had to live with him.”

Fray holds out the copy of the book to El, who folds her arms and tucks her hands back into her armpits.

“I told you, I don’t wanna read real life tragedy bullshit. Not dad’s, not mom’s, definitely not ours.”

“Quentin looked for us,” Fray says. “I didn’t get far, but it reads like-- He  _really_  looked for us.”

El looks up at Quentin, still hesitant. Margo lowers her bowl of soup to the floor and goes over to the bookcase, grabs another copy, and then settles onto the couch between her siblings to read it.

“Thank you for trying, Quentin,” Fray says, distantly, peering over Margo’s shoulder. Margo’s focus drifts away from the book back up to Quentin at several points and her expression softens each time.

Quentin watches them read until he realizes that it’s late. Really late. He offers the kids his room or the couch or wherever they want, and they wind up taking over his room, the three of them curled together on his bed.

Quentin falls asleep on the couch and when he wakes up, it dawns on him that the three have literally nothing but the clothes on their backs. He looks up a few stores nearby, aware just how much he does not know about the kinds of stores teenagers might like to buy clothes at. There’s a mall not too far away, so he plugs the address into his phone and waits.

Fray is the first one up and she’s still got the book tucked under her arm as she makes her way to the kitchen table.

Quentin slides her the box of cereal and she gives him a sleepy smile as she pours it into her bowl.

“Since the books are your story, as far as I’m concerned the money from them is yours. And I’d be happy to take you guys shopping to get whatever you need. Clothes, shoes, whatever else.”

Fray picks at the tattered sleeve of her t-shirt. “Seriously?”

“We can go once the other two get up. Are they… late sleepers?” As he asks, Quentin realizes second hand stories only go so far and he knows very little about these kids. Things like shoe sizes, favorite colors, medical history hadn’t occurred to him as being important until now.

“We’re all kind of ‘sleep whenever we can for as long as we can’ sleepers,” Fray says. “But they should get up before too long. It’s a new place. It’s always a weird adjustment period.”

They lapse into companionable silence, as Fray finishes her cereal and proceeds to wash the bowl and spoon herself and set them on the drying rack. Quentin opens his mouth several times to say something, but doesn’t, too torn between letting her feel at home and feeling like she deserves a second to not worry about the dishes.

Fray settles back onto the couch with the book, this time with a pencil in hand, scrawling in the margins. Quentin wonders if it’s for his benefit for hers, and decides, again, not to say anything.

El and Margo emerge from the room at the same time two hours later and Fray fills them in Quentin’s offer. They’re delighted and after also eating cereal (neither wash their bowls, and Quentin catches Fray giving them dirty looks), the four head out for the mall. Via bus, as Margo begs El to let them take a normal amount of time to go somewhere for a change.

Quentin lets them wander the stores and bring back whatever they like. Fray favors soft and pastel styles. El wears exclusively oversized sweaters and skinny jeans, a look that makes Quentin question the genetic relation between El and Eliot (although one look at El’s expressive reactions and Quentin forgets it was ever in doubt). Margo’s youth is especially noticeable in the clothes she picks for herself, all dresses and frills and hot pink, but she’s meticulous and has a clear sense of what she wants.

They grab air mattresses and extra bedding while they’re out and Quentin makes a mental note that they cannot live in this apartment forever with four people.

The days that follow are weird and quiet. Quentin isn’t sure what the goal is, besides keeping their heads down. He tries to call Margo again and gets no reply. All three of them ask about Brakebills, so he gets in touch with Fogg and they’re invited to the school for an evening.

El shows off the tattoos to Professor Sunderland, and the two branch off down the hall, diving into some sort of intense discussion.

“You should go with them,” Fogg tells Fray. “I have some things to discuss with Margo and Quentin. We’ll be along in a minute.”

Fray eyes Margo, who gives her a little nod, and she follows after El and Sunderland. Fogg motions for Quentin and Margo to join him in his office.

“I have information that may be enlightening to both of you,” he says as he settles in behind his desk. “And maybe I should’ve told you before, Margo, but I thought we’d have more time.”

“You couldn’t have known we were going to walk through a clock in the cottage and wind up in Fillory,” Margo says, dropping into the chair beside Quentin. “It was broken anyway.”

“And who repaired it?” Fogg asks.

“I did. And if this is about that, I was just messing around with it. I didn’t think--”

“You realize that no one your age should be able to do the things you can do. The kind of spells you’ve mastered are difficult for even third year students here.”

“Guess I’m just smart,” Margo says, matter-of-fact. Quentin smiles.

“No. You’re smart, Margo, of course, but it’s more than that,” Fogg leans back, surveying Margo with a mix between sadness and pride that Quentin can’t make sense of. “I assume you know who the Beast is?”

“He killed my parents. And their friends.”

“Yes. It was an enormous loss. And Quentin and your parents did their best to avenge it. In their attempt to kill the Beast, they drank from the wellspring in Fillory. It made your father and Quentin nearly indestructible. It even granted your mother the ability to do magic, at least temporarily.”

“Who told you about that?” Quentin asks, unsettled as the memories of his last attempt at killing the Beast came crawling back, guilt and shame knotting inside him. He wonders how much Fogg knows about what happened.

“Fen. She came to see our healers a few months after everything happened because she had realized she’d been pregnant when she drank from the wellspring. And because she could still do magic long after it should’ve worn off.”

Quentin recalls Fen in the short time before they’d gone up against the Beast.

She insisted on going with Quentin and Eliot and left the kids with her family near Whitespire. They each drank from the wellspring and Fen had no idea what it would do to her, but, it turned out, she had a small ability to cast. Quentin and Eliot walked her through the first spell and Quentin remembers the delight her eyes as she managed to change the color of her knife’s hilt from dull bronze to neon purple.

“It was uncharted territory,” Fogg says. “We did our best to assess what the long-term effects were, but everything was inconclusive. The magic stopped after she gave birth, but she wouldn’t let us test you when you were so young, so we had no idea what it might have done. Until now. It seems at least part of that power has remained in you, Margo. You are... something new.”

Margo looks solemn as she absorbs the information and Quentin can’t imagine the thoughts running through her head.

He remembers Fen again. She refused to leave them, despite not being able to do much else beside small illusion work. When the Beast appeared, she was under enough pressure to throw battle magic around like it was nothing. And then when thing had gone too far, when Quentin nearly lost control, she’d shot battle magic at  _him_ , which had startled him enough for Eliot to--

For Eliot to--

Quentin shuts down the memory.

“Mom gave me magic?” Margo asks.

“You would’ve been remarkable no matter what. You’re the daughter of a magician and a king,” Fogg says. His gaze diverts to Quentin for a fraction of a moment. “But yes. Her bravery gave you your power. And that’s why you can do spells no one else your age has attempted, why you were able to reverse an irreversible memory charm, why you could help your siblings rip that barn to pieces.”

Margo looks down at her hands in wonder.

“It also means that when the time comes, you’re the one who will have to take on the Beast,” Fogg says.

“Shut the fuck up,” Quentin snaps and Fogg turns his attention to Quentin. He feels Margo’s eyes on him too, but he doesn’t care. He’s furious. “She’s  _thirteen_!”

“And she might be the most powerful living magician on the planet right now. She’ll need training and guidance from the best of the best. And I’m sorry Quentin, but you’re no master magician.”

“I’m not sending her to Brakebills to learn how to get herself killed.”

“You’re not her father.”

“Someone has to look out for her. Especially when it seems like everyone else just wants to use her.”

“Stop! Just stop talking about me like I’m not here!” Margo shouts, finger twisting  _just so._

The clock on the wall stops mid-tick.  Quentin can’t move. Out of the corner of his eyes, Fogg appears to be frozen as well.

Margo gets out of her chair, startled, “Wait, no. How did I--? How do I stop this?”

She grabs the sleeve of Quentin’s shirt and tugs, but Quentin can only move his eyes to follow Margo.

“Oh god,” Margo gasps. “How do I--?”

Time snaps back and Quentin and Fogg both drop, dead weight onto the desk. Quentin bolts up as soon as he can manage it, gasping.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do this!”

Quentin reaches out to her wordlessly and Margo locks her arms around his neck and hangs on.

“We can talk later” Quentin says, both to Fogg and Margo. “Let’s just go home for now.”

Fogg doesn’t follow them as they depart. Halfway down the hall, Margo’s hand slips into Quentin’s.

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs.

“I’ve been down the path of doing anything and everything to kill the Beast. Your parents are the only reason I’m still here. They saved me from myself and I won’t let their daughter make the same mistakes I made.”

“But shouldn’t I know how to protect myself? If it comes down to it and he shows up for us. And wouldn’t killing what killed them mean  _something_?”

“I--”  _Can’t let you die. Can’t let Eliot down. Can’t let my mistakes still ruin everything._  “I just want to keep you safe.”

“I don’t think you can, Quentin,” Margo says. “I don’t think we’ll ever be safe.”

And Quentin doesn’t know what to say to that because all the things he wants to say (  _Of course you’ll be safe_ and  _I’ll be strong enough to protect you_ and  _I’ll never let anything happen to you ever again)_ are more desperate wishes than truths.

They find El and Fray with Sunderland and after Quentin exchanges forced pleasantries, they head back to the apartment.

“When are we going back?” El asks, claiming a spot on the couch before the other two have had a chance to get their bearings. El stretches out like a cat and yawns loudly.

“I don’t know; maybe never.”

El startles back upright to glare at Quentin. “What do you mean? Sunderland said I have to keep training with her. I know I act like I know what I’m doing but… there’s still stuff I don’t know and I want to learn.”

Quentin knows there’s a point to what she’s saying, even with his own reservations about Fogg. So he relents and El seems to calm enough to snag the blanket off the back of the couch and make a show of curling up to sleep.

Sunderland isn’t Fogg and at the very least doesn’t think El is some kind of teenage weapon to throw at a Monster and hope for the best. And if El gets a handle on traveling, all the better.

As the week one mark finally rolls around and Quentin is starting to figure out a routine, Margo calls back.

“You got them?"

“Margo? Yeah, they’re safe, can we visit? They’ve been worried about you, especially other-Margo.”

“I just got back like an hour ago and I feel like shit, but I’m here and I think it’ll last.”

“We’ll be there in three minutes.”

“Aren’t you out in Massachusetts? How are you--?”

Quentin hangs up and goes to gather the kids. He gives the address to El and a moment later they hear Margo Hanson yelp as they appear in the middle of her apartment.

“What the fuck?”

Quentin grins at her.

“Margo!” both Margos shout at each other, and Mini-Margo promptly runs into her namesake’s arms. Margo holds her close, rocking back on her heels from the force of the hug. She stares at Quentin in bewilderment.

“El’s kind of a traveler,” Quentin explains.

Margo’s confusion transitions to a grin and she reaches out an arm to El. “Hey you.”

El skitters over to Margo and wraps long arms around her. Margo peeks up around the heads of the two kids hanging onto her to give Fray a smile, and Fray darts in to join in the hug. Margo with three kids in her arms is strange because it’s the last way Quentin would ever picture her, but he’s also not sure he’s ever seen her happier.

“What’s the plan?” Margo asks when she finally lets go of them and they huddle together near her.

“No plan,” Quentin says. “We’re just existing for a second. Seeing you, saying hi.”

“Can we be normal?” Fray asks. “Like, normal kids that are hanging out with their parents’ best friends for the day. That kind of normal.”

Quentin exchanges a look with Margo, who looks about as uncertain as he does.

“We haven’t done that in awhile,” Margo says. “You might have to give us some tips.”

Mini-Margo preens at the idea of being in charge, “You should probably buy us ice cream.”

So they do, at a tiny ice cream parlor around the corner from Margo’s apartment. Mini-Margo gets three scoops balanced precariously one atop the other and there’s a light in her eyes now. She’s a thirteen year old with a big grin, doted upon by adults who care about her.

El unwinds too, her arm stretched out across the back of Fray’s chair as she reads the shop’s website off Margo’s phone, commenting with tidbits of information on the owner’s wacky history.

Fray hunkers down in a small bowl of ice cream at the edge of the table, watchful of the other occupants of the ice cream shop, and of her siblings. But halfway through the bowl she seems to be relaxing enough to laugh when Mini-Margo tries to lick melted ice cream off her own elbow.

On the walk back and up into the apartment, Margo and Quentin tell the kids increasingly inappropriate stories about Eliot and Fen and Fillory. Quentin tries to keep it PG. He knows there’s something thrilling about hearing the shenanigans a parent got up to in their youth, but he also doesn’t want to completely destroy the fatherly picture of Eliot they have.

Margo holds no such reservations and has a whole host of Eliot stories that even Quentin has never heard before, many of which involve drug use, near-misses with alcohol poisoning, or wild romantic entanglements.

“And that was  _nothing_! You should’ve seen how he was with Quentin when they met,” Margo laughs, wrapping up a story about Eliot deciding to marry a Lorian king while in the middle of a duel to the death with him.

“Wait you and Dad--?” Fray looks at Quentin, surprised.

“Oh honey, you have no idea,” Margo says. “Your dad had it so bad for Quentin, it was almost embarrassing. He came back to the Cottage right after meeting Q and was all ‘I’ve met the love of my life’ because this was pre-Fillory, over-the-top Eliot in his prime. And he wasn’t being serious, but  _god_ was he into you.”

Quentin blinks. “I didn’t know that.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Margo says. She turns back to the kids. “Q and your dad are the biggest dumbasses I’ve ever met. I don’t know if you ever thought you inherited your smarts from Eliot, but you didn’t. It’s from your mom and me.”

Mini-Margo beams and lifts her chin at the compliment.

That night the kids crash on the couches in Margo’s living room, while Margo insists Quentin share her bed. They wind up nose-to-nose as they reminisce.

“I’m glad you’re not dead,” Margo says. “I think I said that before, but… when I got back, I was alone and everything was horrible.”

“Do you remember Blackspire?”

“You looked so bad, Q. I saw Eliot carrying you, it was-- I thought you were dead. And then Penny was bleeding out and Eliot never came back and everyone else was just-- Everyone I loved was dead. And then I was gone and that was better. Is it bad that it was better? I think sometimes it’s okay to be Janet, just to not have to deal with the unrelenting fuckery of my reality.”

“Do you want us to put the spell back?”

“No,” Margo says quickly. “I want-- to be me. Whatever that means now. Looking after Eliot’s kids, giving you shit, whatever else there is left for me. I’m going to find it, because I want it.”

“Then we’ll figure out how to help you.”

“This is the happiest I’ve been in a long time, Q. Let’s just enjoy that part.”

He shuts up and tries to sleep, Margo tucked in against his chest and both of his arms wrapped around her. Memories fall back into place of a time that feels centuries ago, when life had been entirely about Brakebills, Fillory, and magic. It still is, he supposes, but it's different now.

In the middle of making breakfast the next day, Margo gets a migraine and informs them that they need to leave.

“Now!” she moves the still-hot frying pan to the sink and drops it in. “Sorry, there’s not gonna be breakfast.”

Mini-Margo pushes back when Quentin motions for her to start moving. “Why can’t we try to help her? Why were we wasting our time yesterday if you knew this could happen this fast?”

“We need time to figure things out,” Quentin says.

She shakes her head and runs to Margo, hugging her tight. They press their foreheads together and Margo whispers something that makes both of them tear up.

Mini-Margo steps back, moving to stand beside El and taking her hand. Quentin hugs Margo, kisses her cheek, and then joins the others to let El take them back home.

The apartment reappears around them and Margo pulls her hand out of his and turns her back to them, rubbing her eyes.

“We have to help her,” Margo says. “And that means Brakebills, Quentin. I’m not talking about learning anything dangerous, I just want to help Margo.”

Quentin agrees. He can’t believe he’s saying it, but he is, against his better judgement, and even as he’s calling Fogg later that night, a part of him knows he’ll regret it.

It didn’t occur to Quentin, when he first set out on his quest, that taking in three children indefinitely meant things like schools and schedules and homework. He had spent so much time worrying about finding them, that he never really got much further than that in his plans. And now they’re here, sleeping on air mattresses on his living room floor and that can’t be how things are forever.

So with money from the books and a sense of normalcy he’s trying to make up on the fly, he gets them packed up and moved to a small house in upstate New York, a reasonable distance from Brakebills, where Fogg and Sunderland have agreed to teach one-on-one courses with Margo and El. Quentin offers to teach Fray from his small repertoire of minor mendings, and she accepts.

Their new house has four whole bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a kitchen that’s meant for more than one person. There’s even a tiny yard and if Quentin wasn’t so terrified it’d all fall apart at a moment’s notice, he’d have bought a dog.

There’s also an actual high school nearby. Brakebills teaches magic, but it doesn’t teach things like English or math or science and while he’s sure he’s not an ideal guardian, he’s not about to let them become high school drop-outs.

As he starts filling out the paperwork, it becomes obvious that he can’t just enroll them in school under their legal names. Both because they have the same names as children’s book characters, and because he’s not sure how aware the Beast is of their presence yet. There’s been no sign of him, but El’s traveling and was in Fillory and there’s a good chance he knows the kids are alive.

It’d be a lot easier just have them be Coldwaters. Which is a lot to ask, he knows that, but he forces himself to do it anyway and then waits, gauging their reactions.

El looks down, lost in thought, and doesn’t say anything.

“I mean there’s still a ‘Waugh’ sound in the middle, isn’t there?” Margo shrugs. “We’re just making it a longer name.”

Quentin laughs and Fray makes a face at him, but there’s a hint of a smile under it and he feels better.

“I know who we are,” Fray says. “So. Yeah, call us Coldwaters if it makes it easier.”

“I know it’s not--”

“It’s fine, Quentin,” Fray reassures him. “We’ll be fine.”

Quentin lets the conversation drift into excitement about school and classes and having the chance to be normal kids for awhile. Margo babbles about back-to-school shopping. Fray worries over how Quentin plans on fabricating their transcripts and asks if she can help him with the spellwork to make sure it looks accurate.

El, meanwhile, stays quiet until after dinner. As Quentin washes dishes and El dries them off, El looks so spaced out Quentin finally just  _asks._

“Are you okay with all of this?”

El blinks, looking over at Quentin, then goes back thinking again. For a moment Quentin thinks El won’t respond, but then El says, “When we go back to school, don’t enroll me as Eliza.”

“You don’t have to do that. I wouldn’t ask you to change your entire name, just--.”

“But my name isn’t Eliza,” El says, turning fully to face Quentin and holding his gaze with a stern conviction that only a child of royalty could possess. “I knew it wasn’t for a long time and I finally figured it out. I’m gonna be Eliot. And I’ll still go by El, I don’t want to change everything, but my name is Eliot.”

And oh-so-much about El clicks into place that Quentin feels stupid for not realizing it sooner.

Also,  _Eliot._

Quentin repeats the name, struggling to keep his voice even, “That’s a great-- It’s--”

He can’t finish his sentence. He’s spent the last few months wondering over the similarities between El and Eliot. What Taylor said always rang true, but he could never put his finger on exactly  _how_ it was true. And he couldn’t exactly force it out of them; it was personal, even if Quentin wanted to help. And he did; he wanted so badly to offer whatever understanding and support he could. He’s a bit like Eliot too, after all.

And now here it is: Not Eliza, but Eliot. El.

“For what it’s worth, you remind me  _a lo_ t of your dad,” Quentin says, voice taut with emotion. “You’ve got the same nose.”

He flicks some soap suds at El’s nose. They laugh as they wipe the suds away, but their fingers stay on their nose a moment longer, once again thoughtful.

“Dad really…  _got_ me. I don’t think anyone else ever did. They all tried, with pronouns and whatever, but Dad-- When I was eight, I told him I wasn’t a girl and probably wasn’t a boy either. And he just said,” El pauses, recalling the memory with care. “‘  _I’m glad you told me so I can start introducing you as yourself, that must have been really frustrating for you before._ ’ And then he took me to get my hair cut. He always called me El. He never slipped up and he never tried to make me explain everything to him. He just understood. He  _knew_ me.”

Quentin smiles, imagining Eliot getting the chance to be the kind of parent he never had growing up. He must have been so  _good_ at it. Quentin always knew he would be, but El was living proof.

“He bought me this bright blue suit for my first school dance, but I never got to-- I mean, our house got leveled. Everything was gone, so I’ll never-- I miss him, Q. I miss him so much and it’s not  _fair,_ ” El’s hands to start to shake and the plate in their hands slips out and shatters onto the floor.

“Fuck,” El steps away from the broken shards, sob rising in their throat.

Quentin crouches down and with a quick spell brings the plate back to what it had been. He sets it on the counter and looks over at El.

“Hey,” he says softly, moving closer, arms open.

El shoves away from him, hard, “You’re not my fucking dad, Quentin.”

It’s meant to hurt, and it almost does, but Quentin can see the pain in El’s eyes so clearly and knows this isn’t entirely about him.

“You think you can just move us to a big house and put us in school with your last name and we’ll be your kids?” El has backed themselves into the corner of the kitchen, eyes wide and searching for an escape. “One happy family, like we can just forget about everything.”

“No,” Quentin says, stepping back to give El an exit. “I know you can’t go back. You’ve lost too much and nothing will ever fix that.”

“My parents are dead. They’re dead and I--” El laughs around a sob. “I can’t do this. I don’t know how to  _do this._ Any of it! I can’t just go to school and learn magic and--”

Quentin slides the plate off the table and hands it back to El. “Throw it.”

El stares as they take it, then  _screams,_  deep and angry and hurting, and smashes it on the ground. Quentin hands them another and El smashes that one too.

“What’s going on?” Fray appears in the doorway, panicked.

“We’re doing what we can,” Quentin says, grabbing two plates this time, handing one off to El and keeping one for himself. They smash them together and the shards skitter across the floor.

Fray looks between then, nonplussed.

El wipes their tears, sucking in a lungful of air and nodding gratefully to Quentin. They move to Fray, who immediately offers them a hug, and El slumps into their sister’s arms and sobs.

An hour later, Quentin has put the dishes back together with no evidence a break had ever occurred. Fray has El settled back in their room and she sits down on the couch across from Quentin. She slumps with a weariness that’s bone-deep and makes Quentin feel tired just looking at her.

“I guess they came out to you?”

Quentin nods. Fray slips a little further into the couch.

“El’s fucked,” Fray says. “Living with our grandfather was the worst thing that’s ever happened to them. I don’t know what Mom and Dad were thinking, but...” Fray trails off. She looks up at Quentin and her voice is numb. “I kind of hate them for it. I think I hate my dad, Quentin. And he’s dead so what do I--?”

Fray lets out a sob, folding in on herself, head dropping to her lap. Quentin moves beside her and wraps an arm around her shoulders.

“They were trying to save your life,” Quentin says. “That doesn’t make it not hurt, but your dad loved you and he was trying--”

“You don’t understand,” Fray looks up at him, wiping away tears as they come. “I’ve never seen El like this before. And it’s killing them because it was Dad that put us there.”

“If he hadn’t, you wouldn’t be here to have this conversation. But I get it. It’s shitty and it hurts and it doesn’t make anything that happened better.”

“You don’t know what made the tornado happen,” Fray says. “In the books, you said it was just Margo and it was because she was angry. But it wasn’t her, it was all of us together. And it was because he hit El.”

Quentin swallows. “Fray, I didn’t--”

“Do you think he hit our dad too, back before? Do you think Dad knew?”

Quentin can’t think of a damn thing to say to that.

“Of course you can’t-- You don’t-- You were in love with him,” Fray says. “Which, I mean, I know Dad and Mom weren’t-- We all do. We’re not stupid. They were never in love. None of us happened because--”

She breaks again, crying into Quentin’s shoulder.

Fray is sixteen and her dead parents didn’t love each other, and even if they’d loved Fray and her siblings, they still sent them away to live with a man they knew would be cruel to them. To save their lives. To keep them breathing. But they  _knew_.

And she lives with all of it. Every day, every second, every breath she takes she lives with this terrible, unfair truth.

Quentin lets himself cry with her, for her, and takes her hand in his and they just sit there, angry at the whole damn world.

* * *

_It’s been brought to my attention that I made a rather serious mistake in writing about the middle Waugh child. Going forward, Eliot “El” Waugh (who was incorrectly introduced to you all as Eliza) will be referred to with their real name and pronouns. I’ve contacted the publishers about correcting this mistake in all future editions and reprints._

_~Q_

\-- Excerpt the author’s foreword to “  _The Fairy’s Quest_ ”, fourth book in the “  _Wandering and Wonder_ ” series, by Q. M. Coldwater

* * *

Fray thrives back in school. She’s playing catch-up, but she tackles it head-on and joins Quentin after school for minor mendings with the same energy. She’s focused on something and it seems to do her good.

Margo and El’s dual enrollments in public high school and magic grad school create challenges that Quentin certainly couldn’t have handled half as well at their age. El doesn’t appear to enjoy school in general and spends most evenings griping about homework, but they find a practical value in magic. From the handful of conversations Quentin has had with Sunderland, they’re doing remarkably well.

Between essays and studying for tests, Margo comes home with stacks of spell books, each day getting closer to solving the memory spell. She’s been practicing on bunnies and while most of the spells haven’t been a success, she’s only killed one of them so far and that was weeks ago. Quentin’s getting cross-eyed trying to figure out which bunny is real and which is the memory-altered version.

“I think I got it!” Margo announces the day spring break starts, bounding into the kitchen where Quentin attempts to show Fray how to repair a broken teapot. El trails after Margo, cradling one of her bunnies. “Fogg thinks it’s ready too. There’s a lot of variables and it had to be timed right, but I can do it. I’ve managed to save three bunnies so far.”

Quentin calls Margo Hanson, who answers immediately, and El travels her in to explain the spell.

It has to be done to Janet, but within the first few moments after Margo disappears. There are crystals and at least one item of particular value to Margo that have to be present.

Margo holds up her phone. “I think this is the only thing that’s actually mine at the moment. I’ve been hiding it in an old pair of sneakers whenever Janet shows up. She’d never look there.”

Mini-Margo takes it reverently.

“I don’t know how long I’m going to be around this time,” Margo says. “It might be a minute. Or week.”

“You can stay here,” Quentin offers. “It’s spring break, we don’t have anywhere else to be.”

“Why don’t we go somewhere?” Fray asks. “The spell works anywhere, right, M?”

“As long as Margo is there and the objects are there,” Mini-Margo says. “We could do it on the moon, if we wanted.”

“I hate admitting I can’t do things, but the moon is a little above my pay grade right now,” El says. “And there’s no air.”

“What about an air-retention spell?” Mini-Margo asks. “Same concept as using it underwater, just adjust some of the movements according to the variations in pressure.”

“Oh,” El tilts their head. “Yeah that would work.”

“Spoken like true egomaniacal Brakebills students,” Margo says. “We’re not going to the moon because it’s boring and cold and you'll die. And I have a better place in mind.”

She and El lock eyes and then El grins, reaching out their hands for everyone to gather in. Margo mouths  _Trust me_ in Quentin’s direction and he steps in to join the circle.

They land a moment later in Margo’s hometown of Los Angeles, for sunshine and beaches and time to breathe.

They find a hotel that has open rooms and while in the lobby, Margo strikes up a conversation with a family of four in line behind them. As she and the mom get into an animated discussion of teenagers’ ungodly eating habits, Quentin realizes that the unit of Quentin-Margo-Fray-El-Margo-II bears more than passing resemblance to the proverbial nuclear family. And that's... strange.

As they settle in, Quentin feels lighter, daring to hope that the spell will work. Margo shows no sign of headaches, so they unwind, watching the kids run around on the beach and feeling normal.

Normal enough for Quentin to bring up something he’s wondered ever since Margo mentioned to the kids that they got their smarts from her and Fen. On some level, it made sense because Eliot and Margo were essentially soulmates and of course his children would always have some relation to her. But Margo hadn’t sounded like she was referring to Eliot.

_Your mom and me._

“Hey, so, were you and Fen…?” Quentin trails off, hoping Margo will complete the sentence.

Margo peeks at him over the top of her sunglasses, appraising his question, “Yeah. Eliot was about as much her type as she was his. So once Eliot got kicked off the throne and it was an actual option, yes, Fen and I were banging. Is that what you wanted to know?”

“Um?” Quentin gestures to where Fray is building a sandcastle, just barely out of earshot from them.

“What?” Margo rolls her eyes. “They know. It’s their life, they’re not stupid.”

“I know they know. Trust me, it was a whole conversation. Doesn’t mean it’s not hard for them. My parents weren’t in love and I hated it.”

“Eliot and Fen respected the shit out of each other though, even if they weren’t  _in love._ That’s more than a lot of parents,” Margo says. “Can you imagine if we’d figured this all out sooner, though? Me and Fen, you and El, and the three of them. I think at one point I would’ve hated it, but now… Imagine those badasses running around Whitespire, driving Tick batshit insane, all wild magic.”

“They could’ve been so happy.”

“And they still might be,” Margo looks at him with her most sincere expression, the one she once reserved only for Eliot. “I know it’s hard, but you don’t suck at this. You’re actually a pretty good dad.”

“It took me two years to get to them,” Quentin says. “And I’ve made all of them cry and they never listen to me. They just-- I don’t feel--”

“Okay so. They’re all teenagers. You’ve raised a teenager before, right?”

Quentin flinches a little at the reminder of the fifty years on the mosaic. He’s been back long enough now that he’s forgotten most of the details, will spend months without thinking about it. He didn’t realize Eliot had ever told Margo about it.

“Think back. What do teenagers do?” Margo stares at him with an intensity that makes it hard to meet her eyes.

He does, and quietly admits, “Cry and not listen.”

“Also these kids are Eliot’s. Combine those genetics with a shitload of trauma and…” she gestures vaguely. “You’re doing your best and you love them as they are. That’s enough.”

“Thanks, Margo,” Quentin says, touched. “I really--”

“Hey, El! Get the fuck back on the shore!” Margo shouts, as El goes in waist-deep into the ocean. El glances over their shoulder and Quentin swears El’s about to flip them off when a wave goes crashing up near their chest. El lets out a yelp and wades back to the shore.

Mini-Margo bounds up to them. Her glasses dangle and Quentin pushes them back up the bridge of her nose.

“What do  _you_ want?” he asks, suspicious as she starts to hang onto his arm.

“Uh-uh,” Margo admonishes, already ahead of Quentin. “We’re not buying more ice cream. And you’re not stealing it with magic, either.”

Mini-Margo lets go of Quentin’s arm and makes a face at them, sticking out her tongue, and then runs off into the sand after El, presumably to talk them into stealing ice cream with magic anyway.

“Are we co-parenting?” Quentin asks.

Margo looks at him, eyes wide, “Jesus H. Christ, Q, you can’t just spring revelations like that on me.”

“We’re co-parenting,” Quentin repeats, feeling his jaw go slack. “I’m raising teenagers with  _Margo Hanson_.”

“Fuck off.”

“It’s like we’re married.”

“Shut up, Quentin.”

“You’re a mom!”

“I’m gonna kill you.”

Quentin laughs and Margo slugs him none-too-gently in the shoulder.

Margo gets a headache in the middle of dinner and precisely two seconds later, El has them all zapped up to their hotel room.

Fray and Quentin stand on either side of Margo, guiding her into the center of the room while El gets the lights and Mini-Margo starts concentrating.

Margo is doing her best to hide the pain she’s in, ducking her head down and letting her hair fall in her face. She finally doubles over, a quiet hiss escaping between gritted teeth.

And then Janet reappears.  She opens her mouth to say something, but she freezes in place as Mini-Margo’s spell gets underway. Mini-Margo’s fingers bend, twist, flex, as she mutters an incantation. A glimmer appears and Quentin can see Margo behind Janet. Within Janet? It’s looks like one of those pictures that changes design when tilted a certain way.

Mini-Margo keeps working.

Quentin stand back with Fray and El and the three of them watch as sparks start to fly. Mini-Margo’s face twitches slightly and there’s a soft, pained hum in the back of her throat.

Quentin realizes just how much magic she’s using to maintain this spell. Panic sets into chest and he starts to step forward, reaching out to her, but then suddenly she stops. And Margo’s there, staring at them.

“It worked,” Margo says. “I can feel it. She’s gone.”

Mini-Margo picks herself up from the floor and shuffles toward Margo. She doesn’t hug her, but rather leans into her and lets Margo hold her up.

“Thank you,” Margo says. “You did so good, thank you.”

Mini-Margo lets out a breathy sigh as she nods and Margo kisses the top of her head.

They breathe for a minute, and then Margo asks to go back to her apartment.

“I’ve still got some loose ends to clean up with Janet,” she says. “I’ll figure something out, I guess.”

“You’ll always have a place with us,” Quentin offers.

“I’ll think about it,” Margo says sincerely. “But I don’t think that’s… I’m not their mom, you know? All jokes aside. And I need… I have about ten years’ of grief to process that I haven’t been processing. So. I’m gonna sort out my own life first, whatever that means, and then I’m going to be the best damn aunt the universe has ever seen.”

Quentin hugs her and she hugs him back.

“I’m really glad you’re alive,” she says.

“I’m really glad you’re you.”

She ruffles his hair, and takes El’s hand. A moment later she’s gone and when El gets back, she isn’t with them.

Things settle back into pattern. El still faithfully attends sessions with Sunderland and Brakebills and Margo informs Quentin as she hands him a permission slip that she’d like to take up archery after school to replace the time she’d spent at Brakebills.

A few weeks on, Quentin gets a box of books for  _The Sorcery School_ delivered without ever being made aware they were being published. Or maybe they had told him and he just hadn’t checked his emails in awhile. Possibly months.

“Sorry,” Quentin says, as he unpacks the books onto the table. “I should’ve told them I didn’t want it published, but I was busy with--”

“It’s okay,” Fray says. “You can finish them, if you want. We’ve talked about it and we don’t mind.”

Behind her, El and Margo nod their agreement.

“You don’t owe the world your story,” Quentin says. “It can stay a weird, unfinished children’s series. It was a way to make sense of things while I was trying to find you and I didn’t even-- It doesn’t matter.”

Fray smiles. “Thanks, Q, I appreciate the sentiment there. But I  _want_ it finished. The books are weird and not entirely accurate, but... I don't know. Telling it as a story makes it feel like it all means something. Like it’s not just bad thing after bad thing happening to us.”

“You’re really want this? All of you?”

Fray nods. “I think I want it more than El and Margo, but yeah.”

“Even with the pronoun change, you were still writing me like I was a girl," El says. "I wouldn’t hate being written as myself."

“Okay. Yeah. Um, I’ll… write the next book, but I wasn’t there with you in Fillory and we can’t go back so...”

“I’ll help fill everything in,” Fray says. “Ask me anything.”

“Okay,” Quentin gets up and quickly steps over to his desk, pulls out a notebook, and settles onto the floor in front of them. “Tell me about Fillory.”

* * *

_While Margo was born in our world, Fray and El were born in another, in which their parents had been High King and Queen. They were not especially beloved rulers, nor would they be remembered for much. But they did their best and they loved their kingdom, their friends, and their allies well._

_El was only an infant when they had fled back to Earth, but Fray had been not-quite-three and between the stories told to her growing up and the magic in her bones, she recalled some of it, sometimes, in the dream-haze of memory._

_The castle she’d spent the first three years of her life in, where she’d learned to walk and talk._

_The honorary aunts and uncles who doted on her in their own awkward way. Their names were lost to her, but I remember them well and I’ll tell her about them someday, because they deserve to be remembered._

_When Fray followed El and Margo through the clock, she didn’t know for certain where they would end up until they were there. Standing in the woods, looking out to beautiful white spires of a palace rising up on the horizon. It only took a moment to breathe in the air and know she was home._

\-- Excerpt the “  _The Fairy’s Quest_ ”, fourth book in the “  _Wandering and Wonder_ ” series, by Q. M. Coldwater

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> can you believe this is a breather chapter? the next one's gonna be rough.
> 
> \---
> 
> also, yeah, el is non-binary/agender and I have really complicated feelings about misgendering them from quentin's pov for the last chapter and a half, but ultimately felt like this was what made the most sense. i really wanted el to choose to come out to quentin and so having eliot say something in the letter or have fogg and/or taylor somehow tell quentin felt a little cheap. i also think el is a really private person about their gender and wouldn't be inclined to tell anyone about it they didn't at least subconsciously feel they could trust. im nb myself and checked in with a couple fellow genderweird friends about it, but critiques are welcome. it was a complicated thing to try to write.


	3. Part the Third

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The kids and Quentin get unwanted house guests. El gets a headache.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for misgendering (again) but only in one scene

Quentin falls deeper into the domesticity of it all and loves every second of it: the cleaning, the laundry, the dishes, the shopping. He emails teachers and checks on grades and makes sure to tell the kids to finish their homework before practicing magic (which he remembers as something his father used to tell him, albeit a different kind of magic). He knows friends’ names and parents’ contact info and he can pick out a few of the kids’ classmates as they go filtering out of the school when the bell rings.

Samie in Margo’s Lit class always teases Margo until she laughs in class and gets her into trouble. Quentin knows he should say something about it, but he can’t get over the fact that Margo is laughing at all, after everything.

There’s El’s bitter rival Alex, an insufferable nerd that refuses to leave El alone and seems happiest when he’s annoying them. El considers their restraint in not punching him a point of pride.

Fray’s friend Amelia has been over to study a few times but disappears before Quentin gets home. Fray frequently sneaks off to text her in the middle of dinner and always comes back smiling.

The kids are okay, Quentin tells himself.  _ They’re okay, we’re all doing okay. _ And it seems less like a wish or a daydream and more an actual reality now.

Parent-teacher conferences creep up and Quentin spirals and stresses about them the whole week before. He’s not sure what to expect and when the day arrives, he approaches the school with his schedule clutched in hand, idly thinking he’d rather face another dragon than hear the reality of how his attempts at parenting were going.

He meets with Fray’s teachers first and they put Quentin as ease as they speak highly of her, happy to tell him that Fray works hard and is a bright student. She’s quiet and could benefit from more extracurricular activities, seeing as she’s latched on to just one friend, but she’s smart and dedicated and they all seem fond.

El’s teachers disrupt the relative comfort he gained from Fray’s. For one thing, El has never been an especially motivated student and with that comes average grades and “if she applied herself” rhetoric. He has to correct almost every teacher on El’s pronouns and nearly wants to start throwing battle magic around with their history teacher, Mr. Bryant. He’s a short, stocky man who could be a “before” picture for a hair loss treatment commercial. And he clearly doesn’t like El.

“You’re Eliot’s guardian?” Mr. Bryant grimaces at Quentin’s name on his schedule.

“I’m Quentin,” he says, offering out a hand, which Mr. Bryant refuses.

“Okay, so I’ll get right to it. El’s a difficult kid. She’s distracted. She tunes out, she--”

“They,” Quentin corrects, not understanding how someone would call a kid named Eliot  _ she. _

Mr. Bryant’s eye twitches and he continues, “Gets into fights. Nothing physical, just verbal stuff. It’s starting to get out of hand. She clearly has issues regulating, so I’m not sure...”

“They lost their parents less than three years ago and they’ve had five homes before they started living with me. They’re still adjusting; they just need some patience and some time.”

“If she wants to pass my class, she needs to get her head in the game. I don’t accept sloppy work. She--”

“ _ They _ .”

“--needs to start applying herself. She’s scraping by with a D right now and if she misses any more assignments, it’ll be hard to manage even that.”

“I’ll talk with them.”

Quentin leaves, agitated, and heads to his last meeting of the night with Margo’s teacher. She greets Quentin with an apologetic look and drops a whole new bombshell.

“What do you mean Margo’s been _ absent _ ?” Quentin gapes.

“I’m sorry, were you not aware? The office led me to believe you were the one calling in to excuse her,” Ms. Swansen says, troubled.

“I haven’t-- There’s nothing-- Why haven’t you tried reaching out about this before?”

“The excuses are always believable and we understand she has a chaotic home life, but… Her grades are slipping and they shouldn’t be, because she’s quite clever.”

“How has she--?”  _ Magic, duh _ a Margo-esque voice in Quentin’s head supplies. He rubs his eyes. “If anyone talked to me on the phone about excused absences, there’s a good chance it wasn’t me. I’m sure she was forging my signature or faking my voice or something. She’s smart.”

“That she is,” Ms. Swansen agrees. “From what I’ve heard, they’ve all endured a lot of tragedy recently. Perhaps skipping class is a way of acting out?”

“Yeah, something like that,” Quentin’s brain is running warp-speed as he does the math of where Margo has most likely been going. “I’ll talk to her about it.”

“Is she in any kind of therapy?”

“I’ve tried, but their situation is…” Quentin searches for the word. “Complicated. They’re not really into the idea of opening up about it with someone they don’t think will understand. They barely talk to me about it.”

“Not surprised there. We’ve tried to get all three in touch with school resources, and they all seem hesitant.”

Quentin nods. “Thank you for letting me know. Um, going forward, I’ll physically be here if she’s ever absent. Phone calls probably aren’t from me.”

Ms. Swansen nods, laughing. “Of course. Check in with the office about that before you leave.”

He does, and the office ladies all laugh when he suggests Margo might be faking his voice, but they agree to not excuse Margo without him being physically present. When he gets home, Margo has skittered off to a sleepover at Samie’s, according to Fray’s report. Quentin isn’t surprised, but he is very tired.

He turns to El, “Margo’s ditching classes, so I assume you know and were helping her get back and forth from Brakebills?”

El’s eyes widen and they promptly disappear off the couch.

“Okay,” Quentin bows his head, defeated. “Fine! I guess. I’ll deal with this tomorrow.”

“Everything okay?” Fray asks, peering up at him over her textbook.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll get it figured out,” Quentin says. He starts to head up the stairs to his room, then pauses halfway up and calls down to Fray, curled up on the couch with her book. “You’re doing great, by the way.”

“I know,” Fray says, without looking up, but there’s a soft smile on her face at the praise.

Quentin gets to his room and calls Samie’s dad, who confirms Margo is staying the night there and they’ll take her to school in the morning. From past experience, El will be back before too long from wherever they traveled. Usually it’s the park a few blocks away, but Quentin can’t be sure and he’s also only a small amount of worried, because El zapping out when confronted with school-related things _ has _ been the norm of late. A “Hey, El, how’s your biology homework going?” will most often be met with instant disapparation.

True to his hunch, El is back by the morning, lurking about the kitchen for breakfast and mumbling a greeting to Quentin. They don’t meet his eyes and quietly grab Fray’s hand to travel to school, leaving a half-eaten muffin behind.

Quentin is on the verge of calling the school and yanking both kids out of classes for the afternoon to figure out what the hell is going on, but he wants to give them the benefit of the doubt, wants to let them explain themselves on their own terms. They’re good kids; he  _ wants _ to trust them.

El has Brakebills after school and Margo has her archery classes (the existence of which Quentin wonders if he should be questioning), so Fray is the only one he picks up. She shoves a flyer into Quentin’s hand then sets to buckling herself into the passenger seat, head ducked and not meeting his eyes.

“Junior prom?” Quentin reads the flyer.

Fray nods distractedly as she fidgets with her seatbelt.

“Okay. How many tickets are you getting?”

“Two.”

There’s a beat.

“Probably. I haven’t actually-- I need to-- Um. I have to ask her?”

There’s a slight nervousness in her voice when she says  _ her _ that makes Quentin want to announce his intent to join PFLAG and start flying a rainbow flag outside their house, but he reels it in, as he suspects she wouldn’t particularly appreciate that response.

“Is ‘she’ Amelia?” Quentin guesses. “Do I finally get to meet her?”

“I don’t know, do you?” Fray throws back at him, then grimaces, like she can’t quite believe she just said that. “Sorry. Um. I just didn’t think I’d ever get to do this.”

“I didn’t go to my prom, so I’m as in the dark about how this thing work as you are,” Quentin says. He doesn’t add that he wasn’t at his prom because he was hospitalized at the time, but as he mulls it over, he feels certain Fray could handle that information about him. He tucks it away as something to bring up the next time he tries for a round of “Therapy Isn’t Just For Squares and Antidepressants Are So Not a Big Deal” at the dinner table. He’s oh-for-two now on that one, but maybe some self-disclosure would help.

“I want a dress that’s as Fillory as I can get away with. And I think Amelia would wear a suit, but I’m not sure. Maybe Margo can take us shopping? If Amelia even says yes, that is. Um, can I have the money for the tickets just in case?”

Quentin fishes out a couple twenties from his wallet, just as they hear a loud  _ honk _ and he remembers they’re still in the pick-up lane of the school parking lot.

He waves an apology to the car behind them and peels out of the lot.

They get home and Fray grabs a snack before she pulls out the old Brakebills textbook Quentin loaned her and motions for him to join her. They find something to break (an empty garden pot, this time), then set about to fixing it.

The first few tries, Fray doesn’t so much as nudge the pieces, which is unusual considering what she’s been able to mend so far. The garden pot is barely bigger than the mug she fixed last week.

“You’re too in your head about it,” Quentin says. “Which I totally get because, um, you just came out? And that’s probably a lot.”

He waits, but Fray doesn’t take the bait. She retries the spell, only this time she’s interrupted by El popping into the room. El glances at Quentin, flings their backpack on the couch, then beelines it for the kitchen, presumably to raid the fridge.

Quentin gets up and starts after El, “Hey, I need to--”

Everything goes bright, golden yellow. Every light in the house shuts off, as does the rest of the power, and runes appear shimmering on the walls. The air goes stagnant.

Quentin gets up, flexing his fingers at his sides, turning about the room and trying to figure out where the magic originated from.  Fray gets up from the couch and falls into step behind him, following his gaze about the room.

The lock on the front door unclicks and Quentin whips toward it. 

The door opens and a man and a woman he doesn’t recognize stride inside, the wards parting for them and resealing behind them. They’re well-dressed and they carry an aura of  _ power _ with them.

Quentin plants himself in front of Fray and prays El has the sense to bunker down in the kitchen or else get out of the house past the wards to get help.

“The McAllistairs,” Fray murmurs behind him and steps in a little closer, putting Quentin more obviously between her and them.

“This has gotten quite out of hand, Quentin” the woman shakes her head in a mockery of an apology.

“I don’t think we’ve met,” Quentin says.

“Irene,” she smiles, cheery and warm despite the threat she presents. “Listen, I appreciate the effort you’ve put into helping these kids, but you’re sorely unqualified to be taking care of anything with this kind of power. And there’s the fact that they were removed from our custody without authorization, meaning you’re harboring runaways at the least. Straight-up kidnapping, at the worst.”

“How’d you find us?” Quentin asks. “We were cloaked under every ward and spell in the book.”

“The Library helped us in exchange for the traveler being transferred into their custody. Which is fine by us; travelers are one in a million, but Margo is the only one of her kind. I can’t believe we didn’t realize what a gem we had the first time. Imbued with the power of the Wellspring while in the womb? That’s big league magic, god-level kind of power.”

Irene and the other McAllistair start walking further into the room and Quentin starts recalling every bit of battle magic he’s collected over the years.

Margo might not be here, but if they found the house, it wouldn’t be hard for them to track her down at school or at her friend’s or Brakebills. 

He has to end this now before it gets out of hand.

“Don’t--” Quentin raises his hands, forming the beginnings of a magic missile.

Irene stops, rolling her eyes and her fingers already twisting. Quentin feels his wrists and ankles yank together and he’s brought down to his knees. He struggles, but the magic holds up and he’s immobilized.

“That was cute. Good effort, Coldwater. I’d be disappointed if you didn’t try at least something.”

Fray starts to move and Quentin can see her hands drawing up, readying a spell, but Irene notices it too. Another quick gesture and Fray drops next to him, arms pulled behind her back as well.

“Okay,” Irene says, folding her arms and smirking down at the pair of them. “Let me explain how this is going to go. We take Eliza to the Library, Margo stays with us, Fray ge ts put under the memory spell and back to the foster system. And Quentin… Well. I considered another memory spell, but honestly you’re too much of a pain in the ass.”

Irene raises a hand, tightens her fingers, and Quentin feels a force close around his throat, cutting off his airway and sending him doubling over as he gasps uselessly.

“ _ Stop! _ ”

El sprints out of the kitchen, bolts of magic flying out of their hands and hitting the wall behind Irene haphazardly, leaving black-red burn marks in the wall.

El readies another spell and Irene releases her fingers for a second and Quentin takes a gasping, ragged gulp of air. She re-pinches her fingers together and as Quentin feels his breath leave him again, he sees Fray doubling over too, eyes blown wide in panic.

“I could kill her,” Irene says, to El. “I don’t want to; it’s not a good look. But if it’s between her and me?”

El lowers their hands.

Irene drops hers as well and they can breathe again. Fray chokes in air and Quentin leans toward her.

“Hey, hey you’re okay,” he can hear the hoarseness in his own voice. “Fray?”

Fray’s eyes water and she keeps gasping, more than just breathing, she’s taking in shallow breath after shallow breath, swaying a little as she does.

“Fray--”

“Now that that’s settled,” Irene raises a hand again and tilts her head at Quentin. He stares at Fray and El, and no, _ no  _ he has to protect them, he can’t die here like this.

Something unravels in his mind, fast, a thread being yanked with such force it tears apart everything. Tears apart his wards.

Which seems pointless if you’re about to kill someone, Quentin thinks, and no sooner has he thought this than the runes on the walls pop and shimmer and fade in a burst of light. Irene and the other McAllistair man watch them, transfixed.

_ Bang! _ and the door blasts off its hinges. Margo steps through, fingers interlocking to send a blast of magic flying at the McAllistairs. They both stagger backward, and the force holding Quentin’s wrists and ankles together disappears. He scrambles to get upright and prep an additional spell, thinks a neck snap sounds good about now, but El sprints past him, arms outstretched. They take Irene’s wrist in one hand and claw at the man’s back with the other, and then all three disappear.

Quentin blinks, gapes between Fray and Margo, and then El reappears with a  _ splash _ , alone and sopping wet and gasping. Water from their clothes pools onto the floor around them and they sway back and forth, teeth chattering.

“El?” Quentin takes a step toward them, hands out to steady them.

“I dropped them into the middle of the Pacific,” El says without feeling, not looking at Quentin, but at some point in space beyond him. Quentin gets closer and his movement pulls El’s gaze to him;  _ something _ starting to form in their expression. Quentin reaches out, tentative--

El staggers in place, eyes rolling into the back of their head, and they collapse into Quentin. The cold and the shudders racking their body hit Quentin first, but he barely has a moment to worry about any of it when El lets out an agonized scream, and keeps screaming, and then starts to seize in Quentin’s arms, short, full-bodied twitches that go beyond the shivering.

Quentin struggles to keep them steady in his arms, looking around wildly for a source, for Irene to have crawled back out of the Pacific to curse El, but there’s no one but Fray and Margo, both wide-eyed and terrified.

“What’s happening to them?” Margo shouts over El’s cries, rooted to the spot. Fray seems frozen too, fixated on Quentin and El.

El keeps  _ screaming _ and it’s the worst sound Quentin has ever heard.

“El, El, hey-- Look-- Shhh,” Quentin stammers, choking back his own panic. He lowers them toward the floor, cradling them against his chest all the way down, “Margo, get a pillow--”

Margo does, sliding it under El’s head and Quentin lets them down the rest of the way. El’s scream turn to sobs and they claw at their head. Quentin catches their hands before their fingernails can do any damage and holds them steady.

Fray is there now, kneeling beside them, shaking, crying, scared.

“El,” Quentin says, barely holding back his own tears. “El, can you hear me?”

El’s eyes fly open and they lurch upright, grabbing onto Fray by her shoulders. “ _He’s in my head._ _He’sinmyheadhe’sinmyheadhe’sinmyhead._ ”

Fray puts her hands over El’s, “Who? El, who’s--?”

El looks at Quentin, pleading, then their face screws up in pain once more and they seize again, into Fray, a sob tearing from their throat. Fray holds El in her arms, rocking back and forth, shushing them.

_ He? He who? He--? _

Quentin breathes in sharply and Fray and Margo both jerk toward him at the sound. He runs a hand through his hair, processing everything lightning-fast because it has to be--

Margo broke all the wards, not just his and the McAllistairs, but El’s too. El’s wards that must have been protecting them from the psychic onslaught the Beast inflicted on every traveler on earth. Before, Penny had tried everything to keep the voices away, had overdosed because of it. But this is El and this is a much more powerful Beast than they’d fought before.

“We have to go to Brakebills.”

Quentin rushes out an explanation to the sisters as best he can. Fray lets Quentin heft El into his arms as they get ready to leave. El’s head lolls against his shoulder; they’re half a foot taller than he is and it’s awkward finding a good way to carry them while they’re still spasming, but he manages. Fray grabs the keys and strides out the door ahead of them, starts the car, and watches as Quentin moves past her to lower El into the backseat.

Margo crawls in, adjusting so El’s head is in her lap. “I’ve got them.”

Quentin drives and Fray sits shotgun, but she twists around to look at El and Margo. The thirty minute drive only takes them about fifteen with the way Quentin is driving. Once they’re there they must look a sight, staggering through campus, Quentin holding a thrashing fifteen year old, accompanied by the other two teenagers, all three of them running past grad students toward the med wing.

Quentin kicks the door open to the infirmary and staggers in. “Lipson!”

She’s there, as are her several of her students, and she spins to takes them in. “What on earth?”

“We need help,” Quentin pants out and she nods, leaning in to instruct her students to go find Sunderland and Fogg. She waves a hand and a gurney rolls out from where it rests against the wall to stop in front of them. Quentin lowers El down, careful to keep them steady. Lipson stands across from Quentin on the other side, magic glass pressed to her eye as she examines El.

“I don’t see anything physically wrong,” she says, peering back up at Quentin. “This isn’t a curse or-- What specific--?”

“Their wards are down, the Beast is in their head, and we need him out, now.”

“That’ll be Sunderland then,” she nods. “I can-- I know what it is, I just don’t have the right skillset. But together we should-- I can at least do this for now,” Lipson presses her fingers to El’s temples and makes a quick movement Quentin recognizes as a sleeping charm; El slumps back onto the gurney and Quentin breathes out in relief.

“He’ll still be in their dreams,” Lipson says. “But it’ll make it easier for us to work and they hopefully won’t remember most of it.”

Sunderland arrives a moment later, nearly sprinting into the room. She hurries over to El, pulling out her own glass and scanning over them.

The two professors fuss over El together, talking in hushed whispers. El whimpers in their sleep and Sunderland catches their hand.

“Shh, hey, you’re going to be fine,” she says. Sunderland puts her hand in El’s hair, a fondness and worry in her expression that strikes Quentin. She looks up at him, “You need to go while we work; this is going to take time.”

Quentin doesn’t move, and neither do either of the girls, all three of them just staring at El.

“Quentin,” Lipson snaps. “Please leave.”

Quentin pulls himself back, tugging Fray and Margo with him.

“No,” Margo hisses, pushing back against Quentin. “No, I won’t--”

But Quentin wraps his arm around her shoulders and pulls her away and she lets him, latching onto his side as they leave.

“This is my fault,” Margo whispers. “I didn’t think when I was taking all the wards down, I just wanted-- I was trying to keep you all safe. I just wanted to get in and help.”

“You didn’t do this,” Quentin says, leaning down to her eye-level. “None of this is your fault. You saved us, you did everything you could.”

Margo nods, but he recognizes the guilt still in her eyes all too well. She sits down beside Fray in the plastic waiting room chairs.

Fray won’t look at him. Hasn’t looked at him since they left the house. Quentin sits beside her and she stiffens.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“For being useless?”

Quentin takes that blow. “I’m not… I can’t-- I’m sorry.”

“Margo saved you,” Fray says. “She saved all of us. You just would’ve--”

“Died trying,” Quentin says. “But it wouldn’t have made a difference and I know that. I’m sorry I wish I-- God, I’m sorry.”

Fray folds her arms and turns her head, then shifts her whole body away from him. Quentin starts to reach out, then pulls back and instead gets up entirely to find another seat on the opposite end of the room.

They wait.

And wait.

And after an agonizing hour, Sunderland emerges and all three of them jump up.

“How are they?” Quentin asks.

“We re-established wards and I put a physical blocker on the back of El’s neck. Penny had one, the last time, do you remember...?”

Quentin does.

“It won’t last forever,” she says, for Fray and Margo’s benefit. “And the longer they wear it, the weaker their natural defenses will get. It’s a bandaid, not surgery.”

“So what will fix this?” Fray asks.

Sunderland looks at Quentin and he knows what she’s thinking and he won’t say it. “Quentin, can I speak to you privately?”

Fray and Margo both look indignant, but they don’t follow when Quentin and Sunderland step into the hall outside.

“What are you going to do about the Beast?” Sunderland folds her arms. “I don’t want my student to be driven insane by a monster from another world, so I’d like to know what your plan is to stop that from happening.”

“Nothing,” Quentin says. “There’s nothing. I’ve tried it twice before, the first time didn’t work and the second time nearly-- No. We’ll hide. We’ll figure out another way, get El strong wards; we’ll hide.”

“For the rest of their lives?”

“If we have to.”

Sunderland give him a once over. “You know, I never really spent much time with Eliot. He was a terrible student, frankly. And El isn’t exactly an avid learner but they-- They’re so young. And they deserve a full life and they can’t do that if they’re running. The Beast will catch up to them, one way or another. So do something about it.”

“I can’t.”

Sunderland nods in the direction of the door back to the waiting room.

“No. Fuck off, I’m not putting them on the front lines.”

“Fine,” Sunderland says brusquely. “El’s sleeping, but you can sit in with them, if you’d like.”

Quentin mumbles his thanks and goes back to let the girls know the update. The three of them huddle around El’s bedside as El sleeps. Despite their best efforts to keep their eyes open, Fray and Margo eventually doze off. Quentin stays wide awake, accepting the coffee offered to him by Lipson, and waits. At around two in the morning, El opens their eyes. They gaze up at the ceiling for a long time, unmoving. Quentin doesn’t say anything, but he shifts a little closer, letting El know he’s there.

El stares. Blinks. Stares. Then starts to talk, unprompted, without taking their eyes off the ceiling.

“When the wards broke, the Beast got inside my head.”

“El, I’m so--”

“He could show me things, like I was seeing things through his eyes, so he showed me--”

“Don’t--”

“--how they died. Over and over and over again. You probably already knew, but he didn’t-- it wasn’t over fast, he made sure they--”

He didn’t know, just suspected based on what he knew of the Beast. Hearing it out loud, confirmed, feels like a gutpunch. Quentin bows his head, forcing himself to keep listening as El keeps talking.

“They died trying to protect us. Tried. But… We died. We were there when it happened somehow, all of us. And we died.”

“You couldn’t have been there, it just seemed like--”

“No, I _ saw _ us die,” El says. “And now we’re here, so...  I don’t know. I don’t remember that day very well anymore. We were out, but maybe we weren’t. Maybe we were there and we got brought back or--”

“He was in your head, you don’t know what was real or what he just made up to mess with you.”

“It was real.”

“Okay,” Quentin says softly.

El keeps staring at the ceiling and lapses into silence.

The door to the room swings open and Sunderland enters. Margo and Fray both startle upright in their chairs.

“The McAllistairs are here so you all need to leave, now,” Sunderland says. “Did one of you  _ kill  _ Irene?”

Quentin and El exchange a look.

“Nevermind,” Sunderland shakes her head. “Lipson and Fogg are stalling them, but you need to get out and you need to get out now. Your car is where you left it just outside the wards. Let's go!”

Quentin helps El off the cot and they head for the door, Sunderland joining to escort them back to the car.

As the kids get settled into the back seat, Quentin starts to open up the driver’s door, only for Sunderland to step in and push it shut. She leans in close to Quentin, locking eyes with him.

“You have to find a permanent solution,” she says quietly. “I’m serious, Quentin, you can’t run from this.”

Quentin ducks his head and she steps back, letting him in.

He can’t listen to her right now. He can’t think about anything that puts the kids in danger, he just has to get them out. Somewhere safe.

As they start to drive, Quentin realizes he doesn’t know where they’re going. Not back to the house; that won’t ever be an option again. He thinks of Fray and Amelia, how her friend will never know what happened to her, and a pit settles into his stomach.

But at least she’ll be alive. They’ll all be alive and that’s enough, it has to be enough.

After driving through the night, they stop in a motel. El curls into a ball on one of the beds and Fray curls up beside them, watching them as they try to fall back asleep. Margo starts to claim the other bed, but Quentin pulls her aside.

“Did Fogg teach you anything about wards?”he asks and Margo shakes her head. “Okay. I’m going to teach you how, and you’re going to put them up, okay?”

Margo nods solemnly. Quentin hands her his notebook full of wards he’s learned and tweaked over the years, carefully selected to protect every hotel and apartment and house he’d lived in. He’s long kept it in the car for emergencies, and now he’s grateful he hadn’t let himself sink so far into that false sense of security to bring it into the house.

Quentin guides Margo through them. He casts a few of the smaller ones himself to show her how, and then she takes over and he stands back to observe, offering reminders on the exact placement of her pinky or how long she pauses in a certain position.

They’re stronger than his, even with her inexperience. She’s raw power and her most uncoordinated ward will hold up better than the best of his. She finishes the last one, then sets the book down on the table and slumps back in her chair.

She eyes over Quentin’s shoulder to Fray for a moment before leaning in. “It still feels like this is my fault. If the Beast comes after us now, it’s because I wasn’t careful enough. Everything from here--”

“If the Beast comes after us, it’s because he’s a violent monster with no soul. You saved everyone’s life, Margo, you didn’t do anything wrong.”

“But what if I can kill the Beast? And we don’t have to run, we can go home.”

“He’s a lot stronger now than he was then. We don’t know… Staying alive is what’s important right now. We’ll figure out the rest as we go,” Quentin reaches out and squeezes her hand. “You should get some sleep.”

Margo nods, unconvinced, and slips back over to the empty bed. Quentin turns and sees Fray is still awake, keeping watch on El like a hawk. He taps her shoulder and she jolts, whirling around back at him.

“I can keep on eye on things tonight, if you’re okay with driving tomorrow.”

“I’m not sleeping,” she says, and rolls back away from Quentin. Conversation over.

Quentin claims the creaky desk chair in the corner and sleeps in spurts. Fray is awake every time he is, sometimes next to El, sometimes on the floor, sometimes checking in on Margo.

The next morning, Fray hovers, clocking El’s every move. When they go to scratch the back of their neck, she swats their hand away, glaring. El glares right back, but lowers their hand and sinks into the chair across from Quentin.

“What are we doing, Q?” El asks, rubbing their eyes. “We can’t go home, I figured that part out but what are we doing?”

Quentin shrugs helplessly, “Driving. Getting our bearings, then figuring out how to deal with the McAllistairs.”

El frowns. “That’s it, forever?”

“We should find Margo,” Quentin says. “Other Margo. We can work from there, but let’s get the whole band together before we do anything.”

Mostly he hopes Margo will convince them fighting the Beast is a terrible idea. But she doesn’t text them back, so they drive and drive, stopping in small towns along the way. They’re heading in the general direction of Indiana again, he realizes, and so he takes them on the weirdest route that ends with them only passing through the state for about an hour.

Fray doesn’t look at him. Won’t talk to him. Hasn’t exchanged a single word that isn’t “move” or “yes” or “not right now.” Quentin doesn’t blame her, but it hurts and he wishes he could earn her trust back more than anything, wishes he was strong enough or smart enough, but he isn’t and all he has to offer is mumbled apologies.

Margo doesn’t say much either anymore, but she takes setting up the wards as her sacred duty and sleeps with Quentin’s notebook under her arm.

On the fourth day, Quentin wakes to El crying in their sleep. Fray somehow slept through it, through sheer exhaustion, and Quentin sits beside their bed and gently shakes them awake.

El opens their eyes and shudders, slowly coming back to reality, then latches on to Quentin, wrapping long arms around him and hiding their face in his chest. Quentin runs a hand through their hair, murmuring soft “You’re okay”s until El’s breathing evens out again. Their arms drop to the side and Quentin eases them down onto the bed and goes back to the extra cot he’d set up in the corner for himself.

A week goes by and Fray finally says a full sentence to him.

“We have to go to Fillory,” her arms are folded, lips pressed together in a fine line. “We have to kill the Beast; that’s the only way to save El.” Quentin open his mouth to argue, but Fray shakes her head. “No. This is the way. Margo can handle her shit. We need to stop him.”

“Fray--”

“I’m not asking your permission. We’re going. You can come with, if you have to, but we don’t _ need _ you there.”

“We can find another--”

“We can’t! We can’t! There is no other way! You can’t protect us! You fucking--  You can’t save any of us, so we have to save ourselves!” Fray glares him, shaking. “Fuck you, Quentin.”

Margo looks between Quentin and Fray. She moves to Fray’s side and leans in, putting a hand on her shoulder. They whisper something back and forth, and Fray nods, tearful.

Quentin’s mind runs through the last times he’d tried to kill the Beast. Remembers how close he’d come to--

Remembers trying the spell, the feeling of power surging through him, too much power, too strong, his insides aflame, and Eliot  _ screaming _ his name, running to him, grabbing onto him even though it  _ burned, burned, burned _ both of them and  _ Quentin, you have to stop! _ and  _ I can do this! _ and  _ Quentin, please, Quentin, stop, stop, stop! _ It was Quentin’s fault and he was the only one who could stop it and he did. And Eliot was _ alive, still _ and they could run fast enough to get away from the Beast laughing after them and then it was the three of them, he, Eliot, and Fen. Fen looked scared of him and Eliot shoved him back and  _ Find your own way home; we’re done  _ and then Quentin was alone.

“The Rhineman Ultra?” a voice that isn’t his asks and Quentin tears himself back to reality and sees El watching him. “Your wards are still shit.”

“You can’t-- El, you can’t use that spell.”

“I won’t, but I’m going to tell Margo how.”

“If you were poking around in my head, you saw what it did to me. You know what it could do to her. If she niffins out, she won’t be Margo anymore.”

“She won’t niffin out,” Fray says, looking at Margo. “Right?”

“I was ditching school to keep learning from Fogg,” Margo says. “He’s taught me a lot; I can handle it.”

“You don’t understand how-- Don’t do this,” he looks around desperately at them.

But none of them budge. They’ll do this without him. He can see it in their eyes and god help him if he won’t try to be there to minimize the damage they do to themselves.

“Okay,” Quentin says. “There’s another option. Something safer, sort of. We still have to be in Fillory, but if we find it no one has to niffin out. Did your parents ever tell you about the Leo blade? It’s this knife. Your great-grandfather made it and it’s strong enough to kill the Beast. It should be in the armory in Whitespire.”

“Okay,” Fray says, she looks to El. “Let’s go home.” 

Quentin feels Fray’s hand on his shoulder. He closes his eyes. Breathes.

_ Fillory. _

He can feel the 0.04% opium in the air before he even opens his eyes and when he does he nearly cries at the sight of Whitespire in the distance.

He forgot what it felt like. Now that he’s here again, breathing in the air, letting the world fall back into place, it’s beautiful. And heartbreaking, when he remembers what it used to mean to him and what it can never mean again.

Margo and El start off down the path toward the castle and Fray falls into step with Quentin.

“I’m sorry,” Quentin feels compelled to say again.

Fray ignores that and they walk in silence for a few minutes. The castle disappears from sight as they venture into the thick of the forest. Trekking through the woods is arduous, despite it being Fillory. After the novelty wears off, they’re left to trudge through the foliage and the mud until they approach the gates of the castle.

It’s empty. Completely. There’s no one inside to greet them or try to stop them from waltzing in.

They stick close together as Quentin guides them through to the armory. He remembers exactly where the blade had been left, in its original box. They hadn’t wanted to risk losing it last time in case something went wrong, but something wrong had been “Quentin loses his goddamn mind and nearly kills everyone” and they had subsequently given up on killing the Beast altogether.

Quentin pushes open the door and lets the three inside ahead of him, then steps into the room to look on the bookshelf where the box should be, but isn’t.

It isn’t there.

The three all look quizzically at him.

“It should be…” Quentin puts his hand on the slightly-less-dusty square on the shelf. “Someone took it.”

“Who?” Fray asks.

“I don’t know,” Quentin says. “Maybe the Beast. Your parents and I were the only ones who knew where we’d put it. I-- Let’s sleep here for the night and then… We should go to the wellspring; everyone should drink from it. No one’s doing the Rhineman Ultra except Margo, but if we can all help stall him a little bit, we should.”

They light a fire in one of the hearths and drag moth-eaten blankets out from the various castle rooms. El and Margo retreat to the guest rooms nearby and Quentin is left sitting with Fray.

“I know you’ve got your mind made up, but you were mad at me before because I couldn’t protect you. This is one thing I know enough about that I can protect you from it. Going to fight the Beast with wellspring magic is why your parents kept me away from you when you were younger. I wasn’t… I wasn’t prepared. Margo’s strong, but she’s not any stronger than the rest of us were with the power of the wellspring.”

“You don’t get it, do you?” Fray looks at him. “You can’t-- He took our entire lives away. And I just want to stop running and I want to stop having to be scared that I’m going to wake up and my family will be dead all over again. I just want this over.”

_ One way or another _ , she doesn’t add, but Quentin hears it in her voice anyway and his chest tightens.

They sit in silence. Fray looks away and her eyes wander over the castle around them.

“I think I remember living here,” Fray says. “I remember a woman with dark hair singing to me. It wasn’t Mom, though, it was someone else.”

“Kady,” Quentin says. “When your dad was away, you’d only ever want to listen to her lullabies. She didn’t want to at first, but whenever she sang, you always calmed down, so we’d always hand you off to her when you’d cry. She got used it and started singing new lullabies every time, figured out which ones you liked the best. She loved you.”

“She’s dead, isn’t she?” Fray says and Quentin gives a single nod. “Everyone’s dead.”

“You’re not,” Quentin says meaningfully.

Fray looks at him a long moment before she shakes her head. “I’m going to sleep.”

She slips back to one of the guest chambers. Quentin takes up his spot on the sofa by the fire. He tosses and turns for hours before giving up on sleep and getting up to go take a walk.

When he passes by, he notes the door to Fray’s room is ajar. A glance in and he sees her bed is empty. He checks El’s room, hoping to coax Fray back into giving up her vigil for one night, but El isn’t in their room either. He checks Margo’s room with growing dread and when it’s empty he has to grab onto the door handle for support.

They’re gone.

He sprints down the halls of the castle, shouting their names uselessly. When it’s clear they’re not in the castle, he runs out toward the forest nearby. He keeps shouting, running, but it’s obvious: They’re not there. They left him. They left to go fight the monster that killed everyone Quentin’s ever loved and it’s going to kill them too if he can’t--

He trips as he gets to the edge of the forest and goes sprawling into the grass.

He starts to pick himself up, but then he finds can’t move. At all.

Martin Chatwin leans down into his view, moths dancing across his face. “Quentin Coldwater. What a small world; you never know who you’ll run into.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's one more main-story chapter after this and an epilogue, but I haven't figured out if the epilogue will be a separate chapter or not so stay tuned!


	4. Part the Fourth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An abundance of reunions.

Nearly two decades after the first time he was immobilized in time by the Beast, Quentin finds nothing changes in the way his heart pounds in his chest and his eyes dart to keep Martin in sight.

Martin waves his hand and the moths clear, allowing him to leer down at Quentin, “I always thought you survived that night I killed the rest of your friends. And now here we are. Delightful, honestly.”

Martin stands and Quentin has to strain his eyes to keep him in sight.

“You’re here with the children, aren’t you?”

The force of the spell disappears and Quentin topples over onto the grass, barely catching himself.

“Where are they?” Martin asks.

“Kill me,” Quentin bites out. “I won’t tell you shit about them so just get it over with.”

Martin laughs. “Sorry, Quentin. That was just for dramatic effect. I don’t need you to _tell me_ anything.”

Martin grabs the back of his neck and drags him up to his knees. The world spins and when Martin drops him, he lands on a stone floor, not able to catch himself this time amidst the disorientation.

They’ve traveled. Quentin sits up, cautiously, and takes in the room he now occupies, its stone walls illuminated only by the torches embedded in them. It’s empty, aside from a figure sprawled out on a blanket in the corner. Quentin shuts down his curiosity and doesn’t move, wants no part in whatever game Martin is playing with him.

“Go on,” Martin says, and when Quentin doesn’t, he catches a handful of Quentin’s hair and starts dragging him across the room. Quentin hisses and fights against it, claws at Martin’s hand, digs his heels into the ground and pushes back against the grip on his hair. It’s about as useful as punching a brick wall. Martin pulls him a few feet further into the room and Quentin’s heart stops when he recognizes the figure. Martin lets him drop to the floor, but Quentin can’t focus on anything other than--

_Eliot._

He’s gaunt. His limbs splay out around him like someone simply dumped him onto the floor. His eyes are closed and he shows no indication of awareness about anything that just happened, but there’s a steady rise and fall in his chest and color in his cheeks and he’s-- He’s _alive_.

Quentin crawls the rest of the way to Eliot’s side, shaking, afraid to touch him, like he might be a trick of the light or an illusion.

“Eliot?” Quentin chokes out, taking Eliot’s face in his hands and _oh_ he’s so very real. “Eliot? Oh my god, _Eliot_.”

Quentin jostles him and tries patting his face awake like he used to during--

He’s not waking up.

“What did you do to him?” Quentin doesn’t look away from Eliot’s face, drinking him in. _Eliot. Eliot. Eliot._

“He tried to fake his death by projecting into a golem, but I tracked him down in Fillory before he woke up and recovered. Without the proper healing, he’ll just stay like this forever. Unless I kill him again, for the fifteen time, I believe. Timelines and all, you know how it is. Or you don’t, I suppose, and that’s probably for the best. Between you and me, those last few were _rough_.”

“Where’s Fen?” Quentin scans the room. Is she here too somewhere, locked away and comatose?

“Dead, I’d imagine. I only needed one of them, so I left her where she was. I wasn’t especially interested in her, to be honest.”

“Let us go,” Quentin says, forcing to keep his voice even. It’s all he has left, trying to bargain -- beg -- against his better sense. “You don’t want to take on those kids, they’ll-- They’re stronger than you think. They could kill you, Martin, for real this time. But if you let me take Eliot, if you let us leave, I’ll keep them all out of your way. We’ll never come back to Fillory, we’ll stay on Earth, we’ll live normal, boring lives.”

“Oh _Quentin_ ,” Martin tuts. “That’s a pathetic ask, even for you. Look, I’ll make sure it’s quick. None of them will feel a thing. You, on the other hand… You have no idea what it’s like to pull yourself back together from nothing. After the first time you tried to kill me, the only thing that kept me going was the thought of how much I could make you suffer. And I almost got what I wanted, but then you all fucked off back to Earth. I still killed most of your friends that night, and that was fun, don’t get me wrong, Quentin. But it wasn’t _enough_.”

Martin crouches down in front of him, running a hand over the side of Quentin’s cheek, watching him shudder.

“I like this, though. You and him, dying slowly, knowing all the while that I’m going to kill those kids, knowing _your_ pain will be what lured them in.”

Quentin shifts to plant himself between Martin and Eliot, staring Martin head-on. All it feels like he can do now is stand between a Waugh and someone more powerful, ready to die and hoping it’s enough. Despite knowing down to his core it won’t be, he’s out of better options.

Martin laughs.

He flicks his wrist and Quentin slams against the opposite wall. He feels the _thud_ against the stone reverberate through his body before he hits the ground too, with the same force.

Quentin rolls onto his side and tries to lift himself to his feet, but Martin’s right there ( _not hurting Eliot, focusing on Quentin, good, thank god, that’s something_ ), making a quick slashing motion with his fingers. Quentin sees a burst of light a second before it hits his right arm, tearing through flesh and muscle down to the bone in one clean slice. He cries out, grabbing at it with his other hand on instinct. Blood spills out from between his fingers, but he can’t think about it now. He fights back the pain, pulls himself upright, and stands, unsteady, trying to recall what one-handed battle magic he knows. There’s enough adrenaline and instinct running through him to tap into and pull out a spell he’s sure is meant to break bones.

His hand falls away from the gash in his arm and it bleeds freely without the pressure, _fuck, that’s a lot of blood_. He twists his red-soaked fingers through the motion, throws the spell right at Martin with everything in him.

Martin side-steps it. “Interesting choice.”

He mimics Quentin’s movements and Quentin’s left kneecap shatters.

Quentin goes down, a scream tearing from his throat. His two good limbs struggle for purchase on the ground. He’s losing blood fast, can feel the warmth of it soaking through his shirt and down his arm. He gives up trying for spells and presses down on the wound with whatever strength he has left, trying to ignore the dizzying pain of his knee. He bites his lip bloody trying to keep from crying out again, taking in sharp, short breaths through his nose.

“I think that’s enough, don’t you?” Martin’s voice is hazy above him, barely registering through the pain.

Quentin feels the air suck out of his lungs. He tries to inhale, but it’s like a heavy boot smashes into his chest, cracks through bone and leaves him wheezing, writhing on the ground until he blacks out.

Quentin dreams of Fillory.

He dreams of walking across the rainbow bridge, to the lake where he crowned Eliot high king. It’s almost peaceful here, as the water washes up on the shore.

A cool breeze drifts through his blood-matted hair and now he feels every cracked bone and strung-out nerve. His legs shake but he’s standing, somehow, despite the pain in his knee that should be shattered. But isn’t shattered. But still hurts like it might be.

Before he can investigate further, he hears a small, terrified voice from beside him.

“ _Quentin?_ ” El watches Quentin with wide eyes, equal parts confused and distressed. “What happened? We left you in Whitespire because we thought you’d be safer there, we didn’t--”

“Can you leave?” Quentin asks. “If you can get out of this dream, you have to go, now.”

“I didn’t mean to come here,” El says. “We’re close to the wellspring. We stopped to rest, but in my head, it was like I could hear-- You’re _hurt_.”

Quentin can only imagine the state he’s in as El takes stock of his injuries and he wishes they weren’t here, wishes more than anything they weren’t seeing him like this.

“The Beast has you, doesn’t he?” El looks around the lake, like Martin might pop out from around a corner. “After we left, he must have gone to Whitespire and he--”

El narrows their eyes and takes a step closer. Quentin knows El and this routine enough to start shutting down his thoughts, blocking out memories of Eliot, because if El knows, they’ll run headfirst into the trap. He tries thinking of anything else, even lets the images of the Beast throwing him around the cell come to mind if it’ll stop El from finding--

“I don’t know why you try, Q, your wards are--” El breaks off, staring at Quentin, and their voice cracks, “ _Oh my god._ ” El reels, breath catching in their throat, “Dad’s alive?” and the emotion in their voice nearly overwhelms Quentin. “Dad’s-- _Shit_. Quentin, he’s alive? Is he okay?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t get a lot of time before--” _before I was tortured to lure you into a trap that I’m continuing to set right now by talking with you_. “This is all about setting you up, about getting to you. That’s the only reason he took your dad.”

“You weren’t going to tell me,” El says, a look of betrayal on their face that cuts deep. “You were trying to hide it from me so I wouldn’t-- _My dad’s alive_ , Quentin!”

“And you have to believe me, I will do whatever it takes to get him out of here. I swear. But you need to go. Take your sisters, get to the Neitherlands, hop fountains until you find somewhere safe, and then don’t leave. We’ll find you.”

“You don’t want to do that,” Martin’s voice carries from behind Quentin and he whips around, shoving El behind him, arms thrown out like he has the slightest chance of protecting El.

Martin stands a few feet away from them on the shore, glancing around almost idly.

“What do you want with us?” El asks, pushing their way around Quentin to stand in front of Martin, stony-eyed. Martin’s lips curl into a grin.

“The two of you, but I already have Quentin, so… Just you. And you do have to die, but I’d be more than happy to let your father and your sisters go on their merry way if you cooperate.”

“Quentin has to go free too,” El says, like they’re haggling a garage sale price, not bartering with a monster for lives. “Or no deal. You want me, you let everyone else go.”

“El,” Quentin grabs their wrist and spins them toward him. “Don’t do this.”

“Alright, so here are your actual options,” Martin says, rolling his eyes. “Either I torture your friend and your father unendingly while I tear apart Fillory and Earth to find you. And when I do find you, I kill your sisters in front of you, slowly, before I kill you. _Or_ you come to me and I kill you and Quentin, quick and painless, and the rest of your family goes free. It’s more than a fair deal.”

Quentin feels a growl rising in his throat and he spits out, “You’re not going to touch--”

“Oh do be quiet, Quentin,” Martin rolls his eyes and something _tears_ inside him and Quentin can’t hold back the scream anymore than he can stop himself from blindly grasping out for support and catching onto El’s shoulder.

A coppery taste fills the back of his throat and he coughs, feels blood flecking his lips and El gripping his arm to keep him upright.

“Stop it!” El shouts at Martin. “Stop! Okay, I’ll do it. I’ll meet you. Wherever. Stop hurting him!”

“El, no, don’t--!”

Quentin wakes, gasping, beside Eliot. The cell is empty except for them. He’s sure Martin isn’t far away, but he can’t do anything about that. He can’t do anything about anything. He can’t protect Eliot, can’t stop El from dying, can’t stop Fray or Margo from losing more family.

Quentin rolls onto his side, slowly, trying not to upset his injuries, and finds Eliot’s hand.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, pressing bloody lips against Eliot’s knuckles. “I’m so sorry. God, Eliot, I’m sorry.”

He murmurs apologies until he’s too tired to speak, and then he just thinks them as loud as he can, hoping that, even unconscious, Eliot will understand.

Quentin is so tired and so sad and has been staring at Eliot ( _Eliot, Darling, Dearest, Alive_ ) for so long that the rational part of his brain finally shuts off. He takes Eliot’s face in his hands, noting the new lines and the faint gray creeping into his hair. He kisses him. Once. Softly. Fighting against tears because this is just so needlessly cruel, to have Eliot again and not have him all at once.

His eyes close and he just lies there a moment, his lips against Eliot’s, and lets himself pretend that they’re far away, safe and together and whole.

Quentin presses his forehead against Eliot’s before he pulls away and opens his eyes.

Eliot is looking at him. Eyes open, watching Quentin with a puzzled sadness. His hand finds its way onto Quentin’s cheek and Quentin’s mouth falls open and he just stares, watches Eliot _moving_.

“ _Q_ ,” he laughs around his name. Eliot brushes him thumb over Quentin’s cheek,  now looking at Quentin like he might cry. “ _Ohh_. Oh no.”

Quentin finds his voice, “ _Eliot_?”

“It’s me,” Eliot nods, then nods again, more to himself, smiling a sad, soft smile. “This… Okay, this is okay.”

Eliot draws him in and kisses him again.

Quentin forces himself to pull away, “No, but how are you--?”

“I could ask you the same question,” Eliot says, voice taut with emotion. “I didn’t want you to-- How did it happen to you, then?”

“What?”

“We’re dead, aren’t we? That’s why you’re here and I’m not--” Eliot stops as he takes in Quentin’s bewilderment. “Not dead?”

“No.”

“This isn’t…?” Eliot trails off and stares at Quentin, eyes softening. He kisses him again and Quentin leans into it. Eliot’s hand falls onto his arm, resting on bruised, broken skin and drying blood. Quentin’s breath hitches in pain and Eliot pulls back. His hands still hover over Quentin, but he seems uncertain how to touch him without hurting him.

“Q? What happened?” Eliot really looks at him now, mouth parting and eyes widening as the full scene presents itself.

“We’re locked in here by the Beast; he’s using us as bait to get to the kids. I’ve been trying but-- Eliot, I’m so sorry.”

“You found them? Then that means it’s been--”

“Three years,” Quentin says. “You’ve been gone for three years and-- They lived with me this last year. They were back in school and they were great and then--”

Quentin tells him everything, babbling across narratives. Indiana, Margo, Brakebills, the kids. The books, even, which are hard to explain, but Eliot doesn’t react either way as Quentin rambles an explanation and then keeps talking, about everything he can remember since he got that damn letter. Eliot listens, watching Quentin intently, asking questions every so often. He’s troubled by what he hears, of course; there’s no way to lightly describe the kid’s year before Quentin. Or their last week, for that matter.

When Quentin finishes, Eliot slowly edges his way up to a sitting position, back against the wall. He manages to pull Quentin up too, letting Quentin lean against him.

“I thought you were dead,” Quentin says. “I got your letter and I thought--”

“You weren’t ever supposed to get it,” Eliot says. “We were supposed to come back, we had it all planned out, but we didn’t-- He figured it out, apparently.”

“He said he left Fen to die, but he didn’t say he killed her. Could she still be--?”

“The first time I had a golem death, I was in a coma for a week and that was with healers round the clock. I don’t know if she could-- I don’t know.”

Quentin can’t bear the thought of Fen dying a second time, after whatever hell the Beast had put her and Eliot’s golems through.

“Can we get out of here?” Eliot asks. “Probably a stupid question, but have you…?”

“No, as soon as I got here, all he did was show me you were alive and then beat the shit out of me to get El’s attention. I haven’t had the time to look.”

“Can I--” Eliot nods toward Quentin’s arm. “Most of the healing things I’ve picked up are for scraped knees or bruises. Dad stuff. Not sure how well any of that translates, but I could try?”

Quentin nods and Eliot shifts his arm out from around Quentin and rubs his hands together, then flexes his fingers and presses them over the gash in Quentin’s arm.

The skin knits itself back together, not completely, but enough to make it look like it’s been healing for days instead of hours. Eliot slides his hand down to Quentin’s knee and Quentin bites his lip in an attempt at stifling the pained noise in his throat.

“Sorry, this is going to hurt no matter what,” Eliot murmurs, moving to grip Quentin’s shoulder. “Margo broke her leg when she was eight and it wasn’t healing fast enough for her, so I tried this spell and it worked, but it hurts, so...” Eliot tightens his grip on Quentin’s shoulder before he squeezes hard against Quentin’s shattered knee with his other hand. Quentin turns his face into Eliot’s neck and a whimper still escapes, even as he fights against crying out.

It hurts. Fucking hurts.

And then it’s better, healed several weeks along and more of a dull ache instead of sharp pain.

“Thanks,” Quentin breathes shakily and Eliot runs a hand through Quentin’s hair and presses a quick kiss to his hairline.

Eliot heaves himself up against the side of the wall to stand on unsteady legs and does a lap around the room, then tries a series of locator and revealing spells, none of which turn up anything. There’s no door or apparent exit, which makes sense for a dungeon owned by a traveler.

Eliot returns to Quentin’s side with a sigh. “We’re fucked.”

“I don’t know how-- I mean El is going to try to find you. They have-- They have a shot at stopping the Beast. I’ve tried to talk them out of it at every turn but Margo is so _confident_ about what she can do.”

“They’re going to try to kill him,” Eliot shakes his head.

“I told them what it did to me. El saw it in my head too, they know what it’ll do if they fuck it up, but they’re so stubborn.”

“Well they are _my_ children,” Eliot says and the statement stirs a thought Quentin buried deep down for months.

“Um, this is a really weird time to bring this up but we’re probably all going to die so,” Quentin takes a breath. “Fogg told me Margo is so powerful because Fen was pregnant when she drank from the wellspring. But she couldn’t have been pregnant. It’s not possible, she was with us for the last few months and you didn’t-- You couldn’t have gotten her pregnant because you...”

“Spent every night in your bed,” Eliot finishes for him. “Yeah, we figured that part out too. Margo was _conceived_ while we were powered up on wellspring magic, which is probably why it stayed with her instead of wearing off like it did for the rest of us. She was created with it.”

“You know what I’m trying to ask,” Quentin presses.

“You want to know if Margo was conceived during the ill-advised, last-night-on-earth threesome you, Fen, and I had before we tried killing the Beast.” When Quentin nods, Eliot says simply, “Yes.”

“But that means she couldn’t be yours, because you and Fen didn’t-- She’d have to be--”

“Biologically-speaking, _your_ daughter,” Eliot confirms.

“Fuck,” Quentin breathes. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Eliot looks at him and Quentin already knows perfectly well why Eliot didn’t tell him, for the same reason he hadn’t seen Eliot in a decade before all of this happened. He wants to be angry about it, and maybe another time he’ll be able to fully experience that anger. For now, he can’t because Eliot was probably right and more importantly because Eliot’s _alive_ when, for Quentin, he hadn’t been yesterday.

“I’m sorry,” Eliot offers anyway.

Quentin tucks himself further into Eliot’s side, “If we live, somehow, can I tell her?”

“If we live, we’re all moving into a big house in upstate New York together and I’m never letting any of them or you out of my sight again, so at that point, yeah, tell her.”

Quentin wants to ask about the _or you_ part of it, but he can’t find the energy. It’s is something they deserve to wait for anyway, when the time is right.

They sit like that for awhile, falling into silence, and Quentin just enjoys the feeling of Eliot, breathing and alive next to him.

Martin appears, after several hours, demanding they get up. He explains that he and El worked some negotiation out in the dream Quentin had been ripped from, and that he’s taking them with him to barter.

“Like you won’t kill us all anyway,” Eliot snaps.

“Would you really risk it all to try killing me again, when you still have so much to lose? You’ll still have two children, I think that’s plenty.”

Eliot pushes himself upright, getting up in Martin’s face, hands shaking at his sides. “ _You’re not going to touch them_. I’ll niffin out, if that’s what I takes, I don’t care. I won’t let you hurt them.”

“Watching them die still a sore spot? You knew they were just golems, I don’t understand why you’d--” Martin shrugs. “You know, I don’t actually care. Two children or no children, Eliot. What are you going to do? Quentin’s already dying and it’ll be a long, bloody process to watch.”

“I’m what?”

“Dying of internal injuries that would take even the most skilled healer weeks to repair. And you don’t have that kind of time, you have hours. Maybe a day. Which reminds me, we need to get moving,” Martin eyes Eliot and nods to Quentin.

Eliot hesitates, clearly not wanting to stand down, then steps back and offers Quentin a hand up. He’s still uncoordinated after three years in a magical coma and Quentin is bruised on every surface of his body, so they lean into each other. Eliot’s arms tighten around Quentin’s shoulders and Quentin gets an arm around Eliot’s waist and tries to hold him up. Eliot’s far too light against him (and Quentin finds the energy to worry about that, in the middle of it all), and Quentin is kitten-weak and barely manages to take a step before they have to stop for fear of falling over.

Quentin feels a non-Eliot hand on his shoulder and in a blink they’re in a clearing.

Martin gives them the tiniest push and Quentin’s body gives up on staying upright, the dull ache in his leg flares up and there’s a newer, strange pain in his abdomen. Eliot catches him, barely, and eases him down the rest of the way to the ground.

“I’m fine,” Quentin forces out.

Eliot kneels in front of him, clutching Quentin’s shoulders. “Don’t bullshit me, Q, we’re way past that.”

But they don’t even know how he’s dying. There’s nothing to be done unless they can get back to Brakebills and even that’s a longshot. The tremor in Eliot’s lips suggests he knows it too.

There’s movement in the direction of Martin and Quentin shifts to look and--

It’s El. Facing them, their back to the Beast. El’s eyes lock onto Eliot, a host of emotions crossing their face, finally culminating in a quiet cry: “ _Dad!_ ”

Eliot sprints to clear the distance between them and catches his kid up in a hug, arms bracing around El’s shoulders. El clings to him, shaking, and Quentin can make out quiet sobs. He’s not sure which of them they’re coming from.

Behind them, Quentin sees Martin watching the interaction attentively, but he makes no immediate move to attack. El catches on and untangles themselves from their dad.

Eliot murmurs something Quentin doesn’t catch and El shakes their head, eyes watering. When they turn to face Martin, they wipe their tears and their expression turns to pure steel.

“Okay, I’m here. Let my dad and Quentin go.”

Martin moves toward El, head tilted. His fingers start to curl and his hand edges up from his side. El spots the movement and throws a blast of magic across the clearing at him without missing a beat, enough that he staggers back a step.

Eliot surges forward to stop them, “El, don’t--!”

Martin copies El’s movements and the burst of magic hits them square in the chest. The force knocks them off their feet. Quentin hears Eliot’s shout, distant, but everything else seems to slow down. For a horrible moment El seems to hang in the air, and the next they smack against a tree on the other side of the clearing with a sickening _crack_ before collapsing to the ground, unmoving _._

Quentin starts struggling toward them, despite the too-far distance and the pain in his gut that’s getting too hard to ignore. Eliot makes it to El’s side, pulling El into his lap and feeling for a pulse on their neck. Quentin’s stomach drops -- it can’t be that bad-- but then Eliot’s expression relaxes, just a fraction, and he can breathe again.

For less than a moment. Because Martin now stands directly over them. Quentin calls out a warning and crawls toward them. Eliot looks behind him to the Beast and Quentin can see him considering his options, the fight or flight instincts kicking in. Instead, Eliot curls himself around El, braced for an attack. Quentin can’t get to him fast enough, he knows what’s coming next and he _can’t_ watch this, he can’t--

Just as Martin raises a hand, a jet of flames flies across the clearing, knocking Martin back. When the flames die, Margo stands between Martin and her family, eyes glinting an electric blue.

As she raises her hands to conjure another flame, Martin narrows his eyes, curious, “You’re something different, aren’t you? I can feel your power, you’re--”

Margo throws another jet of flames at him, this time singeing the edges of his coat. He pats the fire away, unphased and smiling, twitching his fingers to counter.

Martin and Margo go back and forth, spells flying at each other and deflecting off into the trees. Quentin starts crawling toward Eliot and El, still terrified with how still El is. It’s too goddamn far away, but he’s sure if he can just bite down the pain and _move_ , he can get to them.

A spell lands a hit on Margo and she staggers in places, startled, then lets out an angry shout. Her hands start to move with a spell Quentin recognizes and he can’t stop himself from screaming, “ _Margo, stop! Don’t!_ ”

She doesn’t.

Quentin will never understand how managed it, but fuck it, _fuck it,_ he won’t let this happen again. He lurches upright, despite the pain from what feels like knives stabbing their way through his insides. He stumbles to Margo’s side, throwing up a shield charm. Martin’s spells bounce off it and Quentin turns all his attention toward Margo, “You have to stop!”

Her hands drop and the spell putters out in the air. She bares her teeth, focused entirely on the Beast over his shoulder, “Back off, Quentin!”

She pushes around him and Quentin tries to grab for her, but she slides away from his attempt with ease and steps back up to cast a bolt of fire, which Martin side-steps.

“Margo, please!”

“No, I can end this!” she shouts over her shoulder. When she turns back with another spell ready, her breath catches in her throat. “What the hell?”

Quentin follows her gaze to Martin. He holds himself in an odd, tensed stance, then reaches behind him, grasping at his back, brow furrowing. Margo conjures a fireball in the palm of her hand as she starts forward, but before she gets more than a step, he topples forward onto the ground.

A knife protrudes from his back, blood spreading out to soak his suit around the wound.

Above him is Fray, hand still outstretched, fingers half curled where she’d held the knife. Beside her, Fen beams in pride at her daughter.

* * *

_Fray left Quentin because it was the right thing to do. Part of it was how little she trusted him now, after everything. At best, he’d get himself killed trying to save them, which led to the other part: Fray didn’t think she could handle losing him too._

_She and her siblings were part of this to the bitter end and no amount of running could stop them from hurtling toward their inevitable fight with the thing that killed their family. But Quentin didn’t have to be part of it. And even if their story ended in tragedy, perhaps he could rewrite it. Give them a happy ending in his books, even if it wasn’t what happened. The idea brought her a measure of comfort and she added it to her list of rationalizations for leaving him at the castle._

_El traveled the three of them to a spot near the wellspring, though not directly to it, because of the anti-traveling wards up everywhere in a five mile radius. They were left to walk on foot the rest of the way and they stopped to sleep before starting the journey, trusting Quentin wouldn’t be able to catch up to them in so little time._

_El woke them barely a few hours later, looking wide awake and shaken._

_“Dad’s alive,” they said. “The Beast has him and Quentin, but they’re both alive.”_

_“That’s not possible,” Fray said._

_“Quentin saw him. I was in his dream, and I poked into his mind again. The Beast only wants me and Quentin, because I’m a traveler and because Quentin almost killed him, from before. He said he’d let Dad go if I turned myself over to him.”_

_“You can’t do that.”_

_“I’m not going to. But I’ll stall him as long as I can, keep Dad and Q alive until you two can get to the wellspring.”_

_“You can’t go by yourself,” Fray said. “We can’t split up, the last time we did that--”_

I died, _Fray thought, but didn’t say. They knew anyway._

_“She’s right,” Margo said. “You need backup and that’s me. I’ve got wellspring magic in my DNA, I don’t know that drinking from it will boost me up anymore that it already has. Fray can keep going to the spring in case we can’t end it on our own.”_

_El and Fray exchanged a look, hesitant and very much not wanting to throw their baby sister at the Beast without an extra edge. But she was probably right and despite reservations, Fray stood back to watch El take Margo’s hand and travel away._

_Fray jogged the last few miles to the wellspring, trying not to think of what might be happening to her siblings._

_The entrance was disguised as an unobtrusive shack, according to various books as well as El’s description of Quentin’s memories, and she recognized it when she came upon it. Fray started toward the door, then noticed movement out of the corner of her eye._

_“Who’s there?” Fray called._

_A figure stepped forward from the side of the wellspring shack, obscured by a dark cloak and hood. Fray tensed, feeling her way into her cloak for the dagger she’d taken from Whitespire before they left._

_The figure moved in front of Fray, then lowered her hood._

_“Mom?”_

_Fray launched herself forward into her mother’s arms._

_“You’re alive,” Fray gasped and felt the tears forming in her eyes. “Oh god,_ you’re alive. _”_

_Fen kissed her hair and held her close, “You made it here.”_

_“Where-- Have you been here the whole time?”_

_“It’s a long story, but I couldn’t get back to Earth. I did everything I could, but there was no way without magic and your father was--”_

_“Dad’s alive too,” Fray said quickly and Fen’s face flooded with relief._

_“Where is he?”_

_“The Beast has him and Quentin, but they’re alive and I’m-- I need to drink from the wellspring. Margo and El are already going to fight him, I have to get back to help them.”_

_“We’ll take the royal carriage, it should get us there quickly,” Fen said. “And I have something better than the wellspring.”_

_She reached into the depths of her cloak and retrieved a wooden case, barely bigger than a shoebox. Fray knew what it was immediately and she looked up at her mother in surprise._

_“I’ve been keeping it safe. You still have to drink from the wellspring, but you don’t have to-- No spells, just use a damn knife. More reliable that way.”_

_Fray laughed and hugged her mother again and Fen stroked a hand through her hair, smiling. Fray had never seen her mother look so alive, but then Fray supposed that made sense. This was her mother’s home. Her home too, once, and now they were here together for the first time in over a decade. She only wished she could actually enjoy it._

\-- Excerpt “ _The Missing Magicians_ ”, fifth book in the “ _Wandering and Wonder_ ” series, by F. Coldwater

* * *

“ _You did it_ ,” Eliot breathes out, staring across the clearing at Martin’s body. Quentin can’t believe it. It’s over. He’s dead.

Fray shudders where she stands and Fen puts a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

“Momma!” Margo shouts and rushes toward her, throwing her arms around Fen and hanging on tightly. Fen holds her daughters close, looking up at Eliot and Quentin and El.

“You’re alive,” Fen says, voice welling with emotion.

Eliot hefts El into his arms and joins the group, and they cluster worriedly around El. There’s a half-healed gash in El’s forehead and bruises mottle their shoulders and arms from the impact of hitting the tree. They’re not moving outside of the faint breaths Quentin watches them draw in like his own life depends on it. _Keep breathing, El._

“What happened?” Fen asks, panic in her voice.

Quentin coughs, earning a worried look from Margo. He realizes she has his nose. He hadn’t let himself see it before, but she does and he smiles. Margo takes it as reassurance and turns her attention back to her injured sibling.

“I did what I could,” Eliot is saying, “but we have to get to Brakebills. Quentin’s in bad shape too.”

Quentin coughs again, harder, and this time he’s barely able to take a breath before another cough hits him and he feels the warm, coppery liquid flood his throat, filling his mouth until he has no choice but to double over, gagging, spitting blood into the grass.

Fray reaches out to him just as his knee gives out. Quentin starts coughing again, feels more blood coming up his throat, and shakes himself away from her, this time dropping to the ground. He can feel hands on his back, at least three -- Fen’s? Fray’s? He can’t tell.

The coughs keep coming and when he opens his eyes, he sees the grass beneath him is red. There should be panic there, but somehow there isn’t. Just sort of strange sadness that settles in his chest. He looks up at them all, Eliot, El, Fen, Fray, and Margo, and manages a smile at the sight of them all together, _finally_ , before he blacks out.

* * *

_Their reunion was a mess of emotions and impending doom and not nearly enough time, but Fray imagines there was never going to be another option for her family. The Waughs were messy. She had known as much since she was very young, when it became apparent to her that her family just didn’t work the way other families did. Her parents were weird, her siblings were weird, and all they had was each other._

_So messy made sense, though this kind of messy was hard to just accept, because all she wanted was to hug her parents and let them take care of her for five minutes and instead she got Quentin collapsed and coughing up blood and El unconscious and barely breathing._

_The Beast was dead, which she could sort of recognize as being her victory, but it fell to the back of her mind as soon as she realized Quentin and El were still in danger._

_“We can’t get back to Earth without El,” Fen said. “I’ve tried. The Beast shut all the portals down; there’s no way through. We’ll have to go to Whitespire, see what we can muster up for supplies and treat them both until El wakes up.”_

_There was some maneuvering to figure out, getting both Quentin and El moving. In the end, Fen and Eliot held Quentin between them, one arm slung over each of their shoulders, his feet dragging on the ground. Fray carried El herself, and Margo brought up the rear with battle magic at the ready._

_They called for a carriage and once Quentin and El were both settled, the remaining four took a second. Eliot wrapped his own long arms around the three of them and it was messy, wet with tears and awkward with varying heights. But they were all together, finally, after far too long._

\-- Excerpt “ _The Missing Magicians_ ”, fifth book in the “ _Wandering and Wonder_ ” series, by F. Coldwater

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter five will be a full-length chapter and it will definitely be the last one!
> 
> Thanks for hanging in with me this far; this is the longest thing I've written that I've managed to actually post and keep updated.


	5. Part the Fifth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> eliot. an interlude of sorts.

_Sixteen Years Ago_

Eliot, while not generally dreaming of a bright and glorious future for himself, had never planned on having kids. Not because he didn’t like kids; they were fine. But he knew he’d be a terrible father, given his role model for it had been… well, bad didn’t quite cover it. He didn’t want to inflict that shitshow on another living thing and he told Fen as much, when she first revealed her pregnancy to him.

Despite reassurances that he would be “great” (from Quentin) “probably” (from Margo), he refused to face the reality of fatherhood, even after Fray was born. During the labor itself, he was there, for Fen’s sake. He yelled at midwives, held her hand, and stayed with her throughout the nine and a half hour ordeal. Immediately following, Eliot made himself scarce. He couldn’t get himself to look at Fray too closely and was happy to let nursery attendants take care of her when Fen couldn’t. He was busy. He had a kingdom to run after all and most royal kids were raised by a series of nannies. Surely that would be better in the long run and if Eliot could avoid being responsible for somehow psychologically scarring his offspring, then he absolutely would.

Margo wouldn’t let him, though. Apparently his wholesale rejection of fatherhood stirred up something in her and she cornered him in his chambers about a month after Fray was born, threatening to kick his ass.

“That little girl deserves a dad who gives a shit about her, and I know you do give a shit, so grow some tits, stop being so goddamn repressed about it, and hold your fucking daughter.”

“I’m--”

“Save it,” Margo snapped. “Here’s the deal. Fen and I are taking a girl’s trip to Earth. Spa weekend, the works. Probably gonna hook her up with some anti-depressants too while we’re in the neighborhood.”

“Anti--?”

“Post-partum depression?” Margo put her hands on her hips. “It’s been a bitch, thanks for asking her. Anyway, you’re on paternity leave. Quentin’s gonna actually rule his kingdom for once and unless he has to start a war or is being harassed into an arranged marriage, I told him he should leave you the fuck alone.”

Eliot’s head spun. “ _Paternity leave?_ ”

“It starts now; you’re welcome. And if you pawn her off on the staff, I’ll know. Bond with your kid, dumbass.”

And then Margo was gone, leaving Eliot alone with Fray sleeping in her cradle.

Eliot hoped, in vain, that she’d sleep the weekend away, but at three in the morning, he woke to a crying newborn.

He stared at the crib from his bed, daring himself to go check on her but somehow not able to get his limbs to cooperate with the command. An unrecommended amount of time passed before he finally crossed the room and leaned over the crib.

Fray was wrinkled, red-faced, and drooling, with too-big eyes that were more horrifying than cute. He was sure he wasn’t supposed to think his daughter was ugly, but he did, which was one more piece of evidence that he wasn’t cut out for this, damn whatever Margo thought.

“Okay, okay,” Eliot muttered, picking her up and holding her out in front of him. He wondered if babies could sense fear. “Shhh, okay? I’m trying. This is me trying.”

Fray screamed louder, somehow, and Eliot wondered how long her little lungs could handle that much strain.

“Hey, baby, please give me something. Please? I’m-- I’m not good at this, we both know it, but if you could give me _something_ to work with here.”

Eliot tucked her tiny body up against his shoulder, patting her back gently and bouncing her up and down, like he’d seen Fen do. He started humming, nothing in particular, as he couldn’t hear himself over Fray’s shrieking. And then all at once, she stopped. Hiccupped into Eliot’s shoulder and made a strange “ooo” gurgling noise as she settled.

Eliot could hear himself humming now, and recognized it enough to start quietly singing, “ _I’ll be a good dad, I swear. You’ll see how much I care, when you meet me.”_

He paused, watching her settling into his arms, then kept singing, softly, rocking her back and forth until her breathing evened out and he swore she was asleep. He could slip her back into her cradle, he realized, but he didn’t really want to, so he kept holding her, singing and swaying.

Fray woke no more than twenty minutes later and Eliot spent the rest of the night trying to shush her. No amount of _Mamma Mia_ versions of ABBA would soothe her completely. He gave it his best effort, valiantly singing his way through _both_ soundtracks and realizing he somehow knew the lyrics to every single song. Embarrassing, but he was pretty sure Fray wouldn’t tell on him. She especially loved the titular song, Dancing Queen, and Thank You for the Music. Hated SOS and Fernando. Eliot wasn’t sure what any of that meant, but he filed it away anyway.

 _She’s so small,_ he thought, spreading one hand out across her entire back. _I could never have been this small._

“Listen,” he murmured, once his voice started giving out. “Me, I’m not so great at this. Your mom’s gonna be great; she’s already great. But I’m gonna fuck up a lot. So when I do, you just have to-- I’ll always be trying, okay? I’ll always love you.”

It didn’t feel like an put-on statement when he said it then, as he feared it might. It was true, something he knew deep down to his bones: this was his daughter and he loved her and whatever happened, he would always love her.

* * *

_Now_

The carriage ride to Whitespire takes entirely too long and Eliot spends it alternating the focus of his soul-crushing panic between El and Quentin. He breathes along with every breath El takes, convincing himself that as long as he does it, El will too. If nothing else he can do that, blood magic and failed healing spells be damned; he can breathe for his kid.

Across from him, Fray cradles Quentin’s head in her lap. He coughs and blood bubbles from his lips. Fray blinks hard, but the tears are coming anyway, even though she tries to swallow them back.

“Hey,” Eliot calls, drawing Fray’s attention. She wipes her face and looks up at him. “Quentin’s survived way worse than this. He’s going to be okay.”

It’s true, Eliot reminds himself; he’s not just placating Fray. This isn’t the first time the Beast beat Quentin to a pulp, leaving him for Eliot to carry to safety. Last time they’d had Eliza-alias-of-Jane-Chatwin in their court to take them back to Earth. This time, not so much. But Quentin had been much worse off then, had been actively bleeding out in Eliot’s arms.

Eliot pushes that memory down.

Fen holds Margo’s hand, while Margo spaces out at the carriage floor. Eliot catches a few reassuring words, between his alternating attentions, and they sound comforting. Fen has always been good at that.

When the carriage finally rattles to a stop, Eliot lifts El back up into his arms, carefully arranging their head to fall on his shoulder, rather than hanging limply to the side. Behind him, Fen and Fray get Quentin moving and Margo pushes ahead toward the entrance, a ball of blue fire cradled in her palm.

Eliot offers directions as Margo leads them through the courtyard, into the castle, and up to the closest guest chamber they can find. Eliot settles El onto the bed and when he turns, Fen and Fray have Quentin moved onto the sofa a few feet away.

Fen goes to raid the castle healing stores and she returns with a satchel over one shoulder, and a vial containing some magical equivalent of smelling salts clasped in her hand. El’s eyes flutter when she places the vial under their nose and Eliot hears Fen’s quiet, relieved sigh.

“Hey,” she calls, setting aside the vial and leaning in, “El? Can you hear me?”

El moans and rubs at the gash in their head, but they manage to keep their eyes open, if unfocused.

“We need you to take us all back to Brakebills. Can you do that, sweetie?”

El blinks a few times and moans an affirmative. Eliot takes Fray’s hand, who has Quentin’s wrist clasped tight. Fen and Margo both grab onto El’s arm.

El squeezes their eyes shut and Eliot copies them. He feels the stone under his knees shift to that of linoleum and when he opens his eyes he recognizes the Brakebills infirmary immediately.

“What the hell!” Several healing students gape at them from across the room, startled at the six people who had just appeared in their ward.

“We need help!” Eliot shouts.

El’s focus slips and their eyelids start fluttering. Eliot scoops them up, carrying them over to the nearest gurney. There’s nothing to do but watch, as healers fly into action and then they’re being shuffled out into the hall to wait.

Margo hunkers into a plastic waiting room chair and Fray sits beside her sister, offering her a hand, whispering something Eliot doesn’t catch. They seem lost in their own world and Eliot wants to say a hundred things to them, but he’s too aware that his child and his partner of fifty years are both possibly dying in the next room over and he can’t--

Eliot finds himself drawing near to Fen, needing the distraction and also desperately wanting to know that she was alright. “What happened to you while I was playing Sleeping Beauty?”

“It was-- I found my way back to my body, somehow. I woke up alone with a bunch of dead healers and you were gone. I didn’t know what had happened. I tried to get back home every way I could, but there was nothing, so I went to the wellspring and got ready. Waited.”

“For three years?”

“What did you expect me to do? I couldn’t fight him on my own, I--”

“No, I mean, you were _alone_ for three years?”

“There was a village nearby,” Fen says. “I wasn’t a wild woman. But yeah.”

“I’m sorry. I woke up from the coma, um, this morning. I wasn’t here, the last three years. So us dying-- happened yesterday.”

Fen stares, “Yesterday?”

“Mhmm. We had, um, takeout the night before for dinner and neither of us could stop staring at the kids because we knew we might never see them again and we slept in the same bed for the first time in years.”

Fen gets her arms around him in an instant and she tucks herself up against his chest. He pushes down his memories of her dying -- they were _all_ dead; he’d been the last one -- and lets her hold him. She always felt like the stronger one of them, in all these years, it was always Fen who called the shots and pulled their shit together.

“We’re gonna get our family back,” Fen says. “All of it.”

“Fuck yeah we are,” Eliot mumbles into her hair.

“What happened?” Margo’s voice drifts over to them and Eliot turns. “When you two died. There were bodies, but no one-- I mean, you’re not dead.”

“We used golems,” Eliot explains. “Creatures made from clay. They can animate on their own, or you can shove your consciousness inside. The three of you each had one, and then your mom and I had ours that we projected into from Fillory.”

“So when you two died, our fake clay-golem-things died too,” Margo says. “Like, we had fake corpses. How did anyone not figure out something weird was happening when the three of us were still alive?”

“They were enchanted to disappear after ten hours or so. Quick enough that they wouldn’t be found by authorities. And ours were meant to disappear from the morgue back to Fillory, and they did, I suppose, but the Beast found us.”

Margo frowns. Fray doesn’t respond to the story at all, staring at the floor, anger in her gaze.

“What about you?” Eliot sits down on Fray’s other side. “Quentin told me some of it, but how--?” Fray looks up at him and the anger doesn’t fade. He’s never seen her look at him like that before. “Fray.”

“You don’t-- I’m glad you’re not dead. But I--,” Fray bites down her words. “You’ll never know what we’ve been through, you can’t imagine--”

Margo nudges her and Fray flinches, getting up out of the chair and walking away. Fen starts toward her and Fray pulls back sharply, turning away.

“No. Don’t-- Don’t fucking touch me.”

Fen raises her hands and Fray pivots back, hands shaking at her sides.

“ _How could you--_? How could you do this to us?” Fray’s voice gets loud, shakes slightly, and she’s glaring at both of them. Fen appears on the verge of tears. “You-- You weren’t even dead! You sent us away and we went through all that shit and you weren’t even dead! And you knew you weren’t going to be dead, you-- I can’t-- Fuck this!”

Fray tugs on the handle to the door back to the infirmary, but it doesn’t budge and she lets out an angry shout, kicks the door, hard, then spins the other way and walks out the other door into campus.

It takes everything in Eliot not to chase after her.

Margo cries quietly from her waiting room chair and Eliot moves over a seat into the spot Fray vacated, while Fen joins them on her other side. Margo buries her face in Fen’s shoulder and Fen strokes her hair.

Fray returns, accompanied by Henry Fogg, around twenty minutes later. She ignores them and beelines straight for a seat in the corner of the room, head ducked down.

Henry watches her, then turns to Eliot and for a second Eliot thinks he might hug him, he seems so pleased to see them, but he doesn’t.

“It’s good to see you,” Henry says quietly. “Fray filled me in on what happened. It’s over?”

Eliot nods.

“Thank fuck,” Henry says, sitting down next to Eliot. “Do you know what you’re going to do next?”

“It’s been three years and we’re technically dead here, so… Not really.”

“There’s two rooms set aside in the cottage for you, if you need a place to figure that out.”

The door opens and all eyes turn toward it as Lipson steps through. “El is fine. They’re asleep but they should wake up on their own before too long. Most of the damage was from the impact, not the spell.”

Murmurs of relief fill the room and Fen finds Eliot’s hand to squeeze.

“And Quentin?” Fray asks, still off in her own corner.

“We’re keeping him in a magically-induced coma. It’s designed to slow down the spell as much as possible. It’s tearing through him, leaving massive internal trauma. We’re having to rebuild organs. It’s-- It’s bad and we’ve only been able to slow it for now. We’re working as fast as we can. This class of healers is some of the brightest we’ve ever had and I’m-- optimistic about his chances.”

Nothing in that sounds optimistic, but Lipson carries an aura of calm with her and Eliot believes her. And he knew her just well enough during his own time at Brakebills to believe she won’t give them false hope.

“We’re getting Quentin moved into a private room; you’ll be able to see him once he’s settled,” Lipson says. “El’s still in the main infirmary. You can sit with them until they wake up if you like.”

El wakes up not long after. They peer around at their family, then latch onto Eliot in a hug that lasts a long time. They don’t talk, really, outside of murmured reassurances, worry, and “glad you’re not dead”s. The others crowd around to offer hugs and Margo in particular fusses over them when it’s her turn.

El is discharged quickly and then they’re off to the cottage per Fogg’s suggestion.

Eliot feels strange walking through the door, to the first place that ever felt like home. It doesn’t feel that way anymore, especially not in its current state. The “TA-DA” sign remains, but the furniture has been rearranged, the walls painted, and new students wander through the living room.

A green-haired girl jumps up from the couch and bounds up to them, grinning at the three kids, “Hey, you guys aren’t dead! Sweet!”

Eliot raises an eyebrow, then remembers all three of them lived here for several months, so of course they’d known some of the students.

“Our parents weren’t dead either, it turned out,” Margo says, gesturing back to Eliot and Fen.

“Your--?” the green-haired girl looks between the kids, then at Eliot. “Shit! Oh my god? You’re Eliot Waugh.”

“You have a reputation, Dad,” El stage-whispers. “For being super cool. I told them there was no way you were ever cool, but they wouldn’t believe me.”

Eliot snorts. “Your Auntie Margo and I threw the best parties this campus will ever see. I’ll have you know I was _very_ cool.”

El scoffs and Eliot ruffles their hair. He turns to the green-haired girl. “Okay, kid, Fogg said we have rooms here. Would you know anything about that?”

“We did just have two new rooms materialize upstairs,” she says hesitantly. “I guess those would be yours? Everyone else here is already assigned a room.”

“Excellent,” Eliot says. “Listen, do the Physical Kids still have a discipline-specific signature cocktail?”

“Yeah…” the green haired girl gapes at him. “Wait, was that--?”

“Me,” Eliot admits wryly.

“Your ego has been stroked enough today,” Fen says, grabbing his arm. “Let’s go.”

A family of five moves into a graduate student dormitory and it’s definitely not the weirdest thing to have happened in the cottage. It is a bit strange to see his kids wandering down the halls where some of his most debauched exploits took place, but he’s trying not to think too hard about it.

There are two shiny new doors at the very end of the hallway that looked squished in. One has two queen beds and the other resembles something out of a summer camp, with a bunk bed and a twin-sized bed squeezed together in a small space. Eliot suspects the two extra rooms are pushing the limits of the space-expanding charms done to the cottage, so it follows that the rooms would be cramped.

“We’ll get a place somewhere else once we figure out what we’re doing,” Eliot says, frowning at the crammed-together furniture.

Margo rolls her eyes. “Please. We lived in the woods for like three weeks one time, this is nothing.”

Eliot tries to keep his expression neutral, but Fen doesn’t bother and goes to hug Margo.

“It’s fine, Mom, god. It was like a bad camping trip, there’s way worse shit we went through,” Margo says, which only upsets Fen more, but she pulls back and forces a smile, fussing with Margo’s hair.

There’s not much to settle into, at this point. Most of the kids’ stuff was left at Quentin’s house or the motel they’d been staying at before traveling to Fillory. Eliot makes a mental note to see about portalling over tomorrow.

For now, he goes back to check on Quentin. El and Margo are passed out before he leaves, but Fray goes with him.

The healing students still on duty guide them toward the room and they enter to find Quentin lying pale and still in a starch-white hospital bed. Eliot moves to his side and takes Quentin’s hand in his and _Jesus_ it’s far too cold.

“How is he?” he asks.

“About the same,” one of the students says, a freckled-face kid with scraggly dark hair. “We’re just trying to slow the spell for now, before we can work on reversing its effects. It can’t kill him like this, but we might not be able to bring him out of it if we don’t fix it.”

“How long does he have?”

“We’re not sure,” he says, shrugging. “Lipson is doing her best.”

He ducks his head and slips back out of the room.

“This is my fault,” Fray whispers, staring at Quentin, still hovering near the door.

Eliot turns back to her, “How the hell could it be--?”

“We left him behind,” Fray snaps. “If we hadn’t just left him alone for the Beast to find, this wouldn’t have happened to him.”

“That’s not-- You left him behind to protect him, didn’t you?”

“You’d think I’d have learned from you and mom that doesn’t work.”

Eliot can’t fathom how much Fray has been through to push her to this point. They hadn’t been especially close as she’d gotten older, but it has never been like _this_. And maybe he deserves it, he’s sure all the resentment the kids have built toward him in the past three years is earned, but that doesn’t make it easy to process, after he’s done so much to try to keep them alive.

Fray backs out of the room and again Eliot doesn’t follow her, despite every instinct telling me to do so. It’s not the time. Instead, he stays with Quentin, holding his hand. Wondering what this must have been like when the roles were reversed, and it was Quentin awake with him in a coma. They’re never going to be on the same page, are they? The universe has never been on their side.

* * *

_Fifteen Years Ago_

Fatherhood was easier the second time, perhaps the result of Fray being the absolute light of everyone’s life in the castle. Whitespire had become rather domestic and Eliot--

He _liked_ it. Mostly because it wasn’t normal domesticity, by Earth standards or Fillory standards. As much as he and Fen were raising their kids, their friends were active participants. It wasn’t entirely down to him; there were seven other people who doted on his daughter with the same general affection.

It made things easy. Having another kid was still weird, of course, and definitely not planned. The result of angsty “we can’t fuck the people we want to fuck” sex that neither he nor Fen would recall fondly. Figured the two times they hooked up (were you allowed to call it hooking up if you were married to the person you were hooking up with? It _felt_ like a hook-up) would result in kids. Eliot’s not sure “extremely fertile” is something he’d ever want to brag about, but there it is.

Eliza Waugh was born a healthy, happy baby who immediately enchanted everyone in the castle. The key quest raged on in the background, nearly complete now, and they all welcomed the distraction of her birth.

“You’re giving everyone baby fever, you know,” Quentin said as he moved to sit beside Eliot on the couch in the cottage, holding out his arms for Eliza. Eliot reluctantly parted with the baby and was rewarded by Quentin pecking him on the lips and then snuggling into his side.

“Including you?” Eliot wrapped an arm loosely around his shoulders.

“No,” Quentin nodded across the room where Kady was tossing Fray up into the air, while Fray shrieked with glee. Kady beamed, eyes alight, then moved Fray to her hip and bounced her up and down, humming softly. Eliot had never seen Kady that soft before, not even with Penny or Julia. It was a good look on her. “She’s got it so bad, I’d give it two more months before she starts talking to Penny.”

 _Kady-and-Penny babies_ , Eliot thought, trying to picture what they’d look like. He shuddered. “Oh god, no. That’s getting into playdate territory. Or just _date_ territory, when they’re older. All our violently attractive progeny running between worlds together. Ugh, Q, don’t make me thinks about this.”

Quentin laughed, and Eliot was about to insist he was serious, dammit, he didn’t want to think about winding up in-laws with Penny and Kady, but Quentin wasn’t laughing at Eliot. He had become focused on the infant in his arms and was cooing at her.

“You sure you don’t have it too?” Eliot rested his chin on Quentin’s shoulder, watching the pair of them warmly.

“I’ve got two already,” Quentin said, looking back at Eliot. “Don’t I?”

Eliot pressed a kiss to Quentin’s temple, “What, you don’t want to be ‘Uncle Quentin’?”

“I think it’d be pretty weird. And it’s like-- You know, with Teddy,” Quentin’s voice strained on the name and Eliot squeezed his shoulder. “You were still his dad.”

“We were practically married then.”

“And we’re not now?” Quentin asked, and then added, in calculatedly casual tone, “I mean, maybe we just drop the ‘practically’ part.”

There was a long beat then, Quentin looking away from the baby to lock eyes with Eliot, earnestness and apprehension mixing there while Eliot tried to find words to respond.

“Are you prop--?”

“Yes,” Quentin cut him off, nodding emphatically.

“Q, I’m not-- saying no. But tomorrow we’re all running off to restore magic and it’s not unlikely we’ll all die horribly. You really want to talk about this now?”

“That’s why I want to talk about it.”

“Live through tomorrow and we’ll talk. Promise.” There was a hint of disappointment in his eyes as Quentin looked away, and Eliot reached out to turn Quentin’s face back to him, kissing him quickly and then saying, “I’ll say yes, Q. But let’s just get through this, okay?”

Quentin nodded and Eliot tightened his fingers on Quentin’s shoulder, trying to show he meant it. They couldn’t talk about it now or Eliot was sure he’d never find the strength to leave the safety of the cottage and Quentin’s arms when the time came. As it was, he had been steadfastly ignoring the possibility that something could go wrong in Blackspire. It wouldn’t. They were going to make it and then they were going to come back and _talk._

Eliot took Eliza back from Quentin and upstairs to the spare room they’d made into a temporary nursery.

While Fray was growing every day more into the mirror image of Fen, Eliot thought he could see himself in Eliza sometimes, even at two months old. He remembered his own baby pictures, distantly, under layers of dusty repression, and he thought Eliza shared more than a passing resemblance to himself. It was sort of thrilling to see, to wonder what she’d look like when she was grown up.

“You’re going to grow up in a world of magic,” Eliot said, leaning over the side of the crib. “And it’s complicated sometimes and sort of bad, but it’s beautiful too. You’re going to love it.”

Whatever came the next day, Eliot told himself his kids would grow up in a world with magic and that was worth whatever price they all had to pay. Wasn’t it? They were so far in their quest and had lost so much already, Eliot couldn’t fathom giving up now. Magic had to be worth it.

* * *

_Now_

Eliot finally tears himself away from Quentin to go back to the cottage, sleeps terribly, and the next morning, once El is checked over a final time by Lipson, the two of them travel out to the house where the kids had lived with Quentin.

It’s charming and very Q, Eliot thinks, as he follows El inside. An organized mess of furniture, pictures and mismatched decorations on the walls, and bookshelves just about everywhere. Niche fantasy and spell books mixed in together. There’s a shelf dedicated to self-help parenting books, which makes Eliot smile.

“Did Quentin tell you about the books?” El asks, pausing to pull one from a shelf and hand it to Eliot: a hardbound volume entitled _The Flight from the Farm._ “This is a reprint of the first one. Quentin went back and had all the publishers fix my name and pronouns.”

“You came out to Quentin,” Eliot says, which he knew, but still finds strange. El had always been private about their gender. They talked with Eliot about changing names at school more than a few times, but they never wanted it. That was three years ago, Eliot has to remind himself, and this is not that El.

“Um, yeah. Things happened and I-- I finally figured out my name,” El takes the book back and sets it in Fray’s bag, along with three others from the shelf. They stand back up, meeting Eliot’s eyes,  “I’m Eliot.”

It takes him a moment to realize El isn’t just saying his name, but is informing him that they chose to name themselves _after_ him, and then he has to swallow back the emotions getting caught in his throat, “Are you now?”

“When I thought you were gone, I-- I still wanted to be El, but I knew it wasn’t going to be Eliza and I-- missed you. I wanted you to still be part of me.”

“I’m always part of you,” Eliot says softly. He catches his kid by the shoulders and draws them into a hug.

El starts to lean in, then pushes back, angry, voice shaking, “You were gone! And that fuck-- _your father_ \-- Do you get what it was like for me, in Indiana?”

He does. Not that it will help, but he does. He knew going into this what it would be like and he told himself it wouldn’t come to that, it’d be a few months at the most, and he and Fen would be back and it would be over. And it would keep them safe. It was always about that, keeping them alive until help could arrive.

“There wasn’t another way to keep you safe,” Eliot says, even though it will never sound like a good enough reason.

“You don’t understand how much he _hated_ me! You just let us live with him. You knew, Dad. You knew I couldn’t-- ”

“ _You had to live_ ,” Eliot wills El to understand, even a little. “You had to live, El, and it was the only way. You had to disappear and your mom’s family was already gone so the only way to get the blood magic to work was him and-- We were trying to save your life.”

El pulls away further, still angry, and Eliot forces himself to step back and give them space.

“I’ll never regret anything more. Letting you stay with him is the worst thing I’ve ever done. And between you and me? I’ve done a lot of terrible things.”

El doesn’t look at him.

“Eliot,” he says, feeling strange using his own name, but it gets their attention. “You don’t ever have to forgive me, if you can’t. I understand.”

El swipes a hand across their eyes and turns back to Eliot. He recognizes the deep-set sadness there from looking in the mirror and he nearly cries from the weight of it. His kid. The bright-eyed twelve year old he remembered hugging goodbye barely a few days ago is now this impossibly sad teenager whose grief he’d played a not insignificant role in creating.

He’d done it, hadn’t he? Fucked up just like he always thought he would.

“I’m trying to,” El says, looking back at him. “Because what’s the point of getting you back if I can’t-- I missed you.”

“I missed you too,” Eliot says. “You grew up, kiddo.”

“I’m almost as tall as you now,” El says tentatively, with the hint of a smile. It’s not forgiveness, exactly, but it’s an olive branch and Eliot seizes it.

“You are absolutely not going to get taller than me,” he says, teasing.

“Well I _could._  I’m fifteen, I’ve got another growth spurt in me.”

“We’ll see.”

“I could!”

And they’re back. Easy banter, emotions pushed down like true Waughs. They finish looting the house for anything of interest, mostly clothes and books, then El travels them back to the motel, where the staff hand over a garbage bag of their stuff. They travel to the cottage to go through it while Fray and Margo start unpacking their own belongings from the house. The bag doesn’t have much, really. A few sets of clothes and a book of warding spells that Margo immediately snags and holds close.

And it has Quentin’s phone with about thirty messages from Margo Hanson.

_Bambi._

Eliot calls her back.

“Quentin? Where the fuck have you been! I get a message about the Beast and McAllisters and then you ghost--?”

“Bambi?”

Dead silence on the other end.

“It’s a long story, but it’s me, Margo. It’s Eliot.”

“That’s not-- No. No fucking way. How is that _possible_?”

“It’s me,” Eliot repeats. “I’m alive, I promise. Fen too, we’re all here and safe.”

He tells her the cliffnotes. She tells him she’s on the next flight out and she’ll meet him at Brakebills.

Eliot has never been able to fully deal with the guilt of his years knowing Margo was alive and living as Janet. After they’d left Quentin, Eliot spent a few years tracking down what he could about the library, wondering who all survived the night they escaped Fillory, one of their friends or someone from the library. And then that digging had turned up that Margo was alive, under a memory spell. He went back and forth constantly on whether to keep trying to bring her back, but every bit of magic he studied was useless, so he finally decided Janet seemed happy enough. He consoled himself with the idea that perhaps Margo was better off without her memories of what she experienced when the Beast had killed the rest of their friends.

But she’s back, he’s back, and by the next day, Margo stands in the cottage doorway. Older now, sadder, but undeniably his Bambi.

He jumps up from his spot on the couch and crosses the short distance between them. She opens her arms and he catches her up in a hug. They fit together just right: two pieces of a whole coming back together. Eliot and Margo, as they were made to be.

A sob catches in his throat without him meaning for it and Margo presses herself tighter against his chest. Her breath hitches a little, “God, Eliot, don’t ever do that shit to me again.”

“I’m sorry. I won’t, I promise.”

She steps back, taking his hand in hers, and considers him for a moment, “You’re going gray. We were supposed to do that together.”

“I know.”

Margo tugs his hand and leads him further into the cottage, toward the sofa, “I can’t believe we’re here again.”

“Margo?”

Margo spots Fen emerging from a room upstairs and Eliot sees his best friend’s body language change entirely, going on alert. She drops his hand and bolts to catch Fen as she reaches the bottom stair. The two women just _look_ at each other for a moment. Fen opens her mouth and closes it a few times and finally just throws her arms around Margo’s neck and kisses her. Margo wraps her arms around Fen’s waist and spins her off the stairs, but doesn’t let her feet hit the floor and instead hoists Fen up. Fen’s legs lock around Margo’s waist and Eliot can’t believe they’re still doing this shit when they’re middle aged.

They break for air and Margo calls over her shoulder, “Listen, Eliot, I love you and we’re gonna have a hundred years to talk, but I’m stealing your wife.”

The pair rush back up the stairs and Eliot stares after them, trying not to miss Quentin.

* * *

_Thirteen Years Ago_

In the beginning, they lived in a cramped two bedroom apartment definitely not intended for a family of four, but Eliot got a shitty job at a bar, Fen started up an artisanal knife-making business, and they made it work. Somehow. They still had no idea how they were going to do anything like this, the two of them and their kids against the world. Eliot felt the absence of the rest of his family daily and painfully. Doing it without them felt wrong. Kady singing lullabies, Penny mind-reading to solve a tantrum, Quentin telling stories, Julia and Alice creating impossible toys and games from magic, Josh’s disastrous attempts at baby-sitting, Margo’s perpetual Margo-ness.

And then to top it all off Fen announced she was pregnant and that Quentin had to be the father and also that it was quite possibly the reason she could still do a small bit of magic despite the wellspring wearing off for him months ago. A trip to Brakebills confirmed the suspicion, though didn’t provide any idea what it meant, besides the fact that the baby was likely going to be unusual, most likely the powerful and dangerous brand of unusual.

“Are you sure you’re okay with all this?” Eliot asked her, once they were back home.  Fen shrugged off her coat and flopped onto the couch, looking back at him. He hung the keys back up on the hook by the door, barely noticing the weird twinge at the normalcy of it all he usually felt. “You don’t-- It never really came up in Fillory, but on Earth we have family planning a woman’s right to choose. You don’t _have_ to have this baby, if it’s too much.”

“It’s not too much. I think it’s what I need,” Fen said, as Eliot moved to sit on the other end of the couch. “I know it sounds weird. But I keep thinking being the mother of a child of Earth would-- make Earth feel less like an escape for me. I’m not going back to Fillory and I-- I want this to be home. And if it’s my child’s home, maybe it’ll be easier.”

Eliot didn’t know if having a baby was really the solution to that problem, but he was sure Fen knew that, so instead, he said, “I’m calling ‘not-it’ on telling Fray.”

“Oh, that’s so not fair!” Fen grabbed the sofa cushion off the back of the couch and hit him with it.

A few hours later, Fray sat at the kitchen table, arms folded, on the verge of tears. She was genuinely distressed by the new revelation, “I don’t _want_ another sister or brother. I already got one stupid sister! Can’t you take it back? Please? And El back too!” Fray said a few hours later, to the resignation of her parents.

Fen turned pleading eyes to Eliot and he sighed, crouching down in front of Fray, “I’m sorry, baby, it doesn’t really work like that.”

“Why not?”

“Because your mom and I already decided.”

“Why?”

“Because El’s going to need someone to pick on, too, after all the picking you do on her.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, why _do you_ pick on her?”

“I just want her to go away! Forever!” Fray threw her hands up in the air, tossed her head back, rolling her eyes. Eliot didn’t mean to laugh, but he did, and that _really_ set her off. She stomped her foot and glared at him and then they argued some more, which went on for longer than optimal. Fray always wanted the last word and Eliot did too. They were a terrible pair and could argue for hours if Fen didn’t interrupt them, which she did, picking Fray up and escorting her from the room to calm her down.

With their first Earth-born child came all the perks of being on Earth instead of a medieval fantasy kingdom. It was the first time they had access to an ultrasound and Fen kept asking questions in the waiting room of the Planned Parenthood about how it worked, and then asked some more questions on the way back the room, for all of which google had some very interesting answers.

“Are you the father?” the tech asked as Eliot helped Fen up onto the table.

“No,” Eliot said. “Just a friend.”

“He’s my husband,” Fen said, as if that would help clarify. It did not and the ultrasound tech looked slightly distressed as she tried to piece together that relationship. Eliot almost offered part of an explanation, but then decided it was funnier to watch her struggle with it.

It went roughly how Eliot expected it to go, not that he had much frame of reference. There were questions, the weird jelly stuff, and the mostly indiscernible video of what they were told was their daughter.

It was a girl.

“Margo,” Eliot said, without meaning to say it. Fen started crying, which earned them a concerned-but-empathetic look from the tech. Fen waved her off and nodded her agreement to Eliot.

In the last month leading up to Margo’s birth, Eliot wondered if her connection to Quentin would make him feel any different, but when nurses handed him the screaming newborn, he knew she was still his. Even if she was also unmistakably part of Quentin too (and maybe he was just imagining it, he’d never seen pictures of Quentin as a baby, but he thought she might have his nose).

Margo didn’t solve everything. Things got more difficult after she was born, considering they’d never had to really budget for things like diapers and baby food before and now they were doing that and paying for an apartment and their other two kids.  But Margo _was_ lovely and sweet and even Fray begrudgingly warmed up to her after a few weeks (the first few weeks were spent fussing over Fen and trying very hard to be helpful, despite being four and thus an agent of chaos).

“Can I hold her?” Fray asked, tugging on Eliot’s sleeve. Fen was out at a ren faire with her knives for the first time since Margo had been born. Eliot was alone with the kids, which was never not overwhelming, but he was sure he was getting better at it.

He agreed and instructed Fray to sit on the couch, reminded her to support Margo’s neck, and then very gently settled the newborn into Fray’s arms.

“She’s kinda ugly,” Fray said sagely.

“You looked exactly the same when you were born,” Eliot said. “She’ll get cuter, just like you did.”

“I’m cute!” Fray insisted.

“You are, princess.”

“And I wasn’t ugly.”

Before Eliot could reply, El toddled over to see what all the excitement was about and Fray let out a shriek and nearly shoved Margo off her lap as her sworn enemy approached. Eliot managed to snag Margo away to safety just in time before the fight broke out, which quickly led to Margo screaming at the fuss. Eliot juggled three shouting kids and finally sorted it out by having Margo back in her crib, Fray sent to her room, and El sobbing what he was certain were mostly crocodile tears into his shoulder.

Apparently, this was fatherhood for the foreseeable future, and even amidst the screaming, he didn’t seem to be completely fucking it up.

* * *

_Now_

When Margo and Fen return, Margo wants to see Quentin, so Eliot and Fen lead the too-familiar way back to the infirmary.

“Is he going to be okay?” Margo asks, studying his face as she sits beside him, brushing his hair back.

“Lipson sounds enthusiastic about the odds,” Eliot says. “There’s been healers in and out constantly, but… he’s still here.”

“If he dies, I’m reanimating the Beast just to kill him again. But way slower this time. I’m gonna really fuck his shit up,” Margo’s voice gets the deep, angry tone it takes when she’s worried and Eliot slips a hand onto her shoulder. “You and Q were gone, but I was there when the rest of them died. You don’t understand. I _can’t_ lose anyone else.”

“You won’t,” Eliot says. “We’re together now. Q’s gonna be fine. Things are going to work out.”

“It better.”

“I want to go back to Fillory,” Fen says, blurting it out like she’s been holding it in for some time. “I lived in those woods for three years. It’s a mess without a monarch and the Beast wasn’t ruling, he was just running around, causing chaos. It’s falling apart and it’s my home and I can’t-- We can go back and we should.”

“I’ll go with you,” Margo says. “It’s my kingdom too.”

Fen looks to Eliot, “I know we made a home here, but what we had is gone. I don’t want to try rebuilding it and Fillory is a way forward.”

Eliot doesn’t disagree, but the kids will be another matter and he says as much. Fen relents a little, but Margo seems confident it will be an easy sell, so the next time they’re altogether, Fen brings it up.

“I’m not going anywhere until Quentin wakes up,” Fray says.

“We’re not leaving him behind,” Eliot reassures her and she softens a little, offering a shrug to the question before her.

“I’ll go,” El says and offers no further explanation.

All eyes fall on mini-Margo, who shrinks back a little.

“I don’t get it,” she says. “We almost died there. Fray _did_ die there. It’s--Why would we go back?”

“Because it’s home,” Fen says. “It’s always been our home.”

Mini-Margo seems unconvinced, but shrugs, “I’ll go wherever the rest of you go. I’m thirteen. I don’t really have a choice, do I?”

“There is another option,” Fogg says, stepping out from where he’d been hovering by the cottage entrance for the last few minutes. “You could stay here to study at Brakebills.”

“Oh, so we’re letting our thirteen year old study at the magic school that got the rest of us almost killed?” Eliot twists to look at Fogg, incredulous.

“Margo’s already been studying here for months already. She’s a bright student.”

“What about the McAllisters?”

“They can’t adopt a child who isn’t an orphan, can they? Co-sign her admission paperwork, she’ll have every right to be here. She wasn’t involved with what happened to Irene, they can’t hold it against her.”

“We’ll talk it over,” Eliot says, even though he has no intention of talking it over, and he’s sure Fen doesn’t either.

Margo Hanson, though, has other plans, which she makes known after the kids have gone to bed and it’s the three of them out on the patio together in a strange, domestic sort of set-up that’s been happening with increasing frequency.

“You should let mini-me go to school,” Margo says.

“What?” Eliot laughs and hopes she’s joking.

“I’m serious. She saved me, she saved Q. Not using magic isn’t really an option with that kind of power. She’ll sneeze and blow up a wing of the castle. Let her have a place to get her shit in check and she’ll be a strong magician instead of loose canon.”

“Brakebills was bad for us when we were in our twenties. She’s thirteen.”

“She’s not us,” Margo says. “She’s stronger than any of us were at her age or when we were twenty-four. And she’s been through more shit, frankly. They all have and they saved Fillory. She’s your kid, I get it--”

“Quentin’s kid,” Eliot interrupts quietly. He’s trying to get used to the idea that it’s going to be this open thing now and if anyone else should know in advance, it should be her.

Margo blinks. Stares at Fen, then back at Eliot. Lets the silence hold for another beat, then, “How _the ever-loving fuck_ is she Quentin’s kid?”

“Ménage à trois the night before we went to fight the Beast,” Eliot says.

Margo bursts into laughter, doubling over, grabbing onto Eliot’s shoulder to keep herself steady.

“You’d think at some point--” she says, while gasping for air between laughter. “-- you’d grow up enough to stop treating threesomes like the ultimate answer to life’s problems. Jesus,” Margo looks at Fen, “God, we’ve all fucked Quentin then, haven’t we?”

Another time, Eliot would’ve laughed with her, because it is incredibly stupid considering two of the three threesomes he’s had that involved Quentin were definitely not great choices in response to impending peril, and that’s not even getting into the questionable threesomes he’s had outside of Quentin.

She clears her throat, trying to compose herself. “Well okay then, ask Quentin. I don’t know, Eliot. But I’ve seen her in action. She can fuck shit up if she doesn’t know what she’s doing. I think she should stay here and learn what she can. Winter and summer vacations in Fillory.”

Eliot has several arguments to make, but Margo’s points all seem to override them and he feels like she’s right. Brakebills is dangerous, but everywhere is dangerous. Here, at least, she could learn to keep herself safe.

They have time to figure it out. For now, he drinks wine and enjoys the company and hopes more than ever Quentin will wake up soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oops yeah no there's gonna be another chapter.
> 
> eliot needed some one-on-one convos to happen with his kids, but quentin also needs some one-on-one convos with his kids so, and i couldn't make them fit together in the same chapter in a way i liked.
> 
> so one more chapter. for real this time.
> 
> a million thanks to livepasthope on tumblr for beta-ing; they're an absolute gem


	6. Part the Sixth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fray develops a bad habit. Margo's parents give her The Talk.

When Quentin wakes, his internal organs feel like they’ve been put into a blender. His shoulder and knee still ache, but he doesn’t seem to be actively dying and that’s an improvement from his muddled recollection of the final showdown with the Beast.

Eliot sits beside his bed in the all-too-familiar Brakebills infirmary and immediately notices Quentin’s eyes open. He leans down to press a kiss to his hairline.

“Hey,” he says, still leaning in and searching Quentin’s eyes.

“Where’s El? Is everyone okay?”

Eliot cards a hand through Quentin’s hair, eyes soft, “El’s fine; nothing Lipson couldn’t fix. And you’re going to be fine too. Lipson put you under for a few weeks while you were healing. She said you’d probably feel like shit when you woke up.”

“Yeah, I kind of do,” Quentin shifts a little and his body protests against the movement, sending shooting pain up through his abdomen and his arm and knee. Eliot looks worried as Quentin takes a moment to steady his breathing, but Quentin pushes through and asks, “The Beast is really dead?”

“No disappearing body this time. Fray killed him for good. We’re all safe,” Eliot’s quiet for a moment, just watching Quentin, like he’s the only thing possibly worthy of attention. “You found my kids.”

It wasn’t like that. Eliot has to know it didn’t go down like that; he heard the stories. Quentin told him those stories, “They found me and every time I tried to keep them safe, they got hurt.”

“I don’t know if you noticed, but I wasn’t exactly helpful in my grand plan to save them either, what with the being locked in a dungeon and all. You tried and you did your best and that’s-- We’re not the heroes this time, Q. They are,” Eliot says it with a conviction, like it’s all he’s thought about for awhile, and Quentin wants to believe him. “Margo and Fen are planning to go back to Fillory, take back the throne, fix whatever shit the Beast did while we were gone. You should come with us. We could finally all be together.”

Quentin’s stomach twists and the anger he’d been too overwhelmed by joy to feel before bubbles to the surface. “It can’t be like it was before. You know that.”

Eliot is undeterred and opens his mouth to counter, but the door opens and Fray bounds in.

“Lipson said Quentin was--”

Fray stops dead, swaying at the change in momentum, and locks eyes on Quentin. Then she rushes ahead to clear the small distance between them and throw her arms around him.

Quentin nearly blacks out from the pain. His insides feel scraped raw from the slightest pressure against his stomach.

“Q? Oh my god, I’m sorry,” she backs away from him, hands raised. He must have cried out when she touched him and he feels a flash of guilt for upsetting her. Like she needs one more thing to feel responsible for on top of everything else.

“I’m fine,” he says through gritted teeth, slowly coming back to his body.

“Lipson said she your organs were starting to liquefy and she had to rebuild some of them,” Eliot says. “It’s going to be rough, starting out.”

Fray’s eyes fill with tears and she can barely meet Quentin’s eyes, “Oh god, this is all my fault.”

“Hey, no, it’s not your fault. C’mere,” he reaches a hand out and pulls her back in, hugging her awkwardly away from his torso.

“No, it is!” Fray insists, but lets Quentin hug her anyway. “I convinced Margo and El to leave you behind. Everything that happened is my fault.”

Quentin peeks over her shoulder at Eliot, uncertain how to qualify any of this. The last time he’d been around Eliot and his kids together, it had been an understood cooperative parenting situation. All their friends had been involved and even after he, Eliot, and Fen had escaped back to Earth, Quentin was still there.

That was more than a decade ago, things have changed, and even with Quentin’s recent parenting stint, they’re not his kids, really. He has to figure out his place in all this and he’s not--

Eliot gives him a warm look and backs out of the room, closing the door behind him as he leaves. Quentin can’t tell if that’s a further complication or a blessing of his pseudo-parenthood or something else altogether. But Eliot’s absence lets him slip back into how it’s usually been with him and Fray, and he rubs her back a little as he hugs her.

“Fray,” Quentin says softly and she hiccups into his shoulder. “Listen, we’re all together now, right? The Beast’s gone. Everyone’s safe. There’s nothing to be sorry about.”

Fray nods against his shoulder, sniffling and pulling back to sit up on the edge of his bed, legs crossed.

“How’s everyone doing?” Quentin asks.

“We’re staying in the cottage and Margo’s here now. The other one, I mean. She’s been spending a lot of time with mom. Did you know they were--?”

“Yeah,” Quentin says. “Not when it was happening, but she told me awhile ago when we were all together. They were always close.”

“I’m glad she’s back because I’ve been fighting with Mom and Dad,” Fray says. “I didn’t mean to, but-- When I first saw them, I didn’t hate them anymore for a minute but it’s been longer than a minute now and I kind of hate them again. What happened isn’t gone. I thought they were dead and we still went to Indiana and I still  _ died  _ in Fillory and El still saw us all die and you were still tortured by the Beast to get to us. It all still happened. It doesn’t  _ fix  _ things.”

“You’re right.”

Fray blinks at him. “You aren’t going to say I should just be grateful they’re alive? Or figure out how to deal and move on?”

“No. I don’t think I can do that, so why should I tell you to do it?”

“You’re mad at them too?”

Quentin nods. Part of him wonders if he should be telling Fray, because it’s complicated and there’s a sense of betrayal tied to it. But he’s not turning Eliot’s kids against him. Fray was already angry and he’s trying to help. He hopes it’ll help.

“I love your dad,” Quentin says. “You know that. But there’s hurt on everyone’s parts right now. I think we were all just trying to do the right thing and we all fucked up a little.”

Fray “hmm”s and shifts in her spot on the bed, thinking.

The door bangs open and Eliot return with the rest of the family in tow. They crowd around Quentin, ask him how he’s feeling, offer hugs that Quentin politely declines, and fill him in on what’s happened since the Beast. He does his best to keep up with them, but he’s tired and sore and overwhelmed by the attention, even from people he loves. Eliot seems to sense it and shoos the rest of the party out, promising to be back later.

Quentin dozes off at some point and when he wakes, Lipson is there, peering at him through magic glass. She tells him to go back to sleep, and he does.

On day two, the worst of the pain inside him goes away, though there’s still his arm and knee. He can give actual hugs, though, and El is the first to take him up on it, as they’re the only one in the room when Quentin wakes up and announces he doesn’t feel like death warmed over. They talk for a bit and El seems happy, or at least, less conflicted than Fray about everything, and Quentin’s glad at least one of the kids seems to be really, truly okay.

Day three, he can walk, a little. By day four he can make his way out of the infirmary, albeit shakily and needing someone to lean on. With Eliot’s help he makes his way to the cottage for a change of scenery.

“What happened to upstate New York?” Quentin asks after Eliot helps him settle onto the couch. It’s not the question that matters most, but he wants to get back around the topic of Fillory, and that seems to be a good way to get at it.

“Hmm?” Eliot drops onto the couch beside him and puts his feet up on the coffee table. The whole thing feels so… familiar. Like it’s twenty years ago and Quentin’s an awkward first year and they’re drinking wine together and--

“You asked me to come to Fillory with you. But before, when we were in the dungeon, you said New York.”

“It’s not about the ‘where,’” Eliot says. “We’re all that’s left, we shouldn’t-- We shouldn’t split up if we don’t have to. We’re family. You’re my family.”

There’s hesitancy in his voice on the last sentence and it’s an offer more than it’s a statement. One Quentin isn’t ready to accept yet because, quite frankly, it’s bullshit. As if Eliot hadn’t been the one to-- “You cut me off. Do you not remember that? It was you who decided that, not me. You kept me away from you, your family, my  _ daughter. _ And I’m not saying you were wrong to do it. I was out of control, I almost got everyone killed, I couldn’t--”

“That’s not why,” Eliot interrupts, “Do you really think it’s because you were dangerous or--? If you’d gone niffin, I would’ve let you kill me. I wouldn’t have tried to stop you.”

Quentin’s stomach drops.

“I  _ didn’t _ try to stop you,” Eliot continues. “When it was starting to happen, I just grabbed you. I could have stopped you; I know the battle magic. But it was you, so I couldn’t. I forgot about Fillory or Fen or the kids and-- I  _ couldn’t _ hurt you.”

“But you did hurt me,” Quentin snaps, because he’s not sure what he’ll feel if he lets himself actually think about what Eliot just said. “I was alone. And I-- got my shit together. I didn’t try to find you, I went muggle for a few years. Got a job in a bookshop, went on dates sometimes. I  _ tried _ . To move on. Until you sent that damn letter and I had to-- I couldn’t say no. I couldn’t let Fray and El and-- and Margo get lost in all of it. But it wasn’t fair and you had no right to--”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Good.”

The conversation is over. Quentin can’t deal with it more than that, so he pushes himself up off the couch. Eliot reaches out to him, but he shakes his head and steadies himself on his own before heading for the door and out of the cottage, ignoring Eliot’s protests.

Margo and Margo are outside, chatting at the table together, with a fancy-looking drink in front of each of them (they look like cocktails, but Quentin assumes mini-Margo’s drink is nonalcoholic and most likely a very pink lemonade).

They turn when the door opens and wear matching concerned expressions. Quentin feels lightheaded and staggers in place, this time struggling to steady himself until the two Margos get on either side of him and loop their arms through his.

“Okay, just take it easy,” Margo Hanson says, eyeing Quentin. “I thought Eliot was helping you around.”

Quentin shakes his head and the Margos exchange a look.

“Here, just sit with us,” Margo says, starting toward the table, but Quentin shakes his head again.

“Actually, I could use a walk. If you wouldn’t mind--?”

“Yeah,” mini-Margo agrees. “Um, how about walking the Sea and back?”

Quentin nods and the pair tighten their grip on his arms as they start to walk. It’s a bit awkward until they get into a good rhythm with it and then before long they’re chatting away and Quentin barely registers that he’d be flat on his ass without them.

“Did Dad tell you Fogg offered to let me keep studying at Brakebills?” mini-Margo asks, as they make it out onto the lawn and approach the main building on campus. “When everyone else goes back to Fillory, I could stay here enrolled as a full time student. I’d have my graduate degree completed by the time I’m eighteen.”

“No, but holy shit,” Quentin can imagine Eliot’s reaction to such a possibility, in light of his wanting to keep everyone together. “Are you going to do it?”

“I haven’t decided. There’s a lot of stuff to sort out. I’d have to stay here while everyone went back to Fillory, which is… um, it’s a lot. I’ve always had Fray and El. I don’t know what it’d be like to leave them. But it’s  _ Brakebills _ . I’m good at magic, but I could get better, learn to control it better. The lessons I’ve had with Fogg are great and all but there’s so much more I could learn and I don’t want to have to wait. I’m ready for it now.”

“You know you’ve got my full support,” Margo says and Quentin is a little surprised at her eagerness to throw mini-Margo to the wilds of Brakebills.

“There’s stuff with finishing high school. There’s stuff I need before I can jump into the more complicated magic. And some magic is math so Fogg said I have to get at least to pre-calculus… Which reminds me, I was supposed to meet him like twenty minutes ago to talk about online school. Um, are you okay if I--?” mini-Margo gestures toward the House with her free hand. Quentin nods. She grins at him and quickly kisses his cheek. “I’m glad you’re okay, Q.”

She races off toward the house and once she’s far enough in the distance, Margo asks, “She doesn’t know she’s your kid yet, does she?”

“It’s been four days since I woke up. So, no,” Quentin says. “Wait, how do  _ you  _ know?”

“Eliot told me,” Margo says. “I cannot picture you fucking Fen and I’m actively choosing not to try. Anyway, you should tell her soon. She’s got plans to make and I think she should know she’s got family here before she makes any decisions.”

“You don’t think I’m going back to Fillory?”

“It probably wouldn’t be the best idea considering that you’re clearly pissed at him.”

“Aren’t you?”

“For fake-dying and leaving me as Janet? Of course. But I get it, sort of. There wasn’t magic strong enough to fix me and they were trying to protect their kids. Fen and I had some angry sex and I feel loads better about the whole thing.”

“I don’t think angry sex is going to fix it for me and Eliot.”

“Don’t knock it til you’ve tried it, Coldwater.”

“I didn’t disappear like you did; I almost died. Almost turned into a niffin and that-- He abandoned me. To stop himself from having to choose between saving me and his kids, which I understand but-- It was ten years and I was on my own. And I had a kid out there I didn’t know about and I lost everything. It was easier when he was dead, because I could just romanticize all of it and not think about the bad parts. But he’s not dead and I love him and I’m pissed at him and I get it but also I--”

Margo hugs him and he freezes, startled at the sudden movement, but her arms feel strong around him and he lets himself melt into it, murmuring gratitude and hugging her back.

When they finally loop around and reach the cottage again, Quentin’s exhausted and Margo leaves him in a chair on the patio while she goes inside. When Fen appears, she’s by herself.

“Margo said you wanted to talk?” Fen asks, sitting down across from Quentin.

“I-- Um, so we have a kid together,” Quentin says, feeling the need to say it out loud.

“We do,” Fen laughs a little. “And she’s great.”

“She is.”

“I’m glad you’ve gotten to know her. I--” she hesitates. “It wasn’t my decision to leave you behind. I didn’t stop it, but it wasn’t my choice and when I found out I was pregnant, I tried to find you.”

Quentin stares at her, stunned. He’d assumed Fen had been in agreement with Eliot’s decision. He forgets sometimes how different they are and how soft Fen is in the places Eliot tends to be unyielding. Forgets about Fen’s tendency to give a shit when Eliot doesn’t.

“It was still early days on Earth for me and I knew Eliot wouldn’t help me so I didn’t really have a good chance of tracking you down. I didn’t know the first thing about a locator spell or-- I’m sorry. I should’ve tried harder.”

“No,” Quentin reaches across the table and puts his hand over hers. “No, I was a mess. It took awhile before I was able to pull myself back. And I did, eventually. I was okay.”

“I don’t know how she’ll take it, when you tell her. Eliot and I never told her all those years and it could just be fuel to the fire of our children hating us.”

“They don’t--” Quentin starts automatically.

“Fray does,” Fen says. “Don’t try to deny it. I know she does and I don’t blame her for it. I just-- I wish things had been different.”

“El and Margo  _ are  _ more forgiving,” Quentin agrees. “But I think it’s because they still had Fray to look out for them. She didn’t have anyone; she was on her own at fourteen and we all failed her.”

“You love them,” Fray says softly.

Quentin nods, “I think you two should be there to tell her with me. Things aren’t great between me and Eliot right now, but she deserves to hear it from all of us. And to know as much as she wants.”

Fen agrees and when they eventually get around to talking to Eliot, he agrees as well. A few days after Quentin is fully cleared from the infirmary (given the cleanest bill of health they can give, considering that his body is still adjusting to the reconstructed organs), Quentin, Fen, and Eliot sit down with Margo outside the cottage.

“This feels like you’re about to give me the sex talk,” Margo says, gaze fliting back and forth between the three of them. “Which I hope you’re not because you’re way too late. The internet exists and I went to public school.”

“It’s more the ‘how you specifically came to be’ talk,” Eliot says. “Which is worse, I think, sorry about that.”

“It’s complicated,” Quentin adds. “And however you feel about it is how you feel. You’re allowed to be angry, if you want.”

“You’re kind of freaking me out,” Margo says, tone light, but there’s a panic setting in her eyes.

“Your mom and I raised you and I’m your dad, always,” Eliot says. “But I wasn’t actually involved in how you came to be. Well, I was  _ there _ , but it wasn’t--”

“ _ Eliot! _ ” Fen chokes and Eliot catches himself.

“Right. Margo, I’m not your biological father.”

“I am,” Quentin braces himself for her reaction, fixates on her probably too intensely, but this is it, this is--

Margo looks between the three of them, brow wrinkling, deep in thought as she absorbs what’s being said.

“You and  _ Quentin _ ?” Margo turns to Fen, confused. “But--?”

“People do weird things sometimes,” Eliot offers. “You can ask whatever questions you want. We’ll be honest with you.”

Margo leans in toward Quentin, searching his face for something-- something familiar, perhaps. He hopes she finds it.

“Nothing changes,” Quentin tries to sound reassuring. “We’re the same as we were before. I just wanted you to know the truth. And you know, family medical history stuff, if you ever needed it.”

Quentin’s been telling himself ever since he woke up that Margo’s been through hell and hasn’t shown signs of the kind of breakdowns Quentin got even before his life went to shit, and that’s a good sign, because he was only a little older than her when he was hospitalized for the first time. But major depressive disorder is still there somewhere in her genetic code, as is the cancer that killed his dad and grandfather, the arthritis on his mom’s side, and whatever else is mixed in there.

“I don’t-- Um, hm,” Margo hums, frowning, looking between her parents.  _ All three of them _ , Quentin thinks, and feels warm despite how uncertain he is about how it’s all going to turn out. “Did you always know?”

“I had my suspicions,” Quentin says. “But I didn’t know for sure.”

“And we knew before you were born,” Eliot says. “Like I said, nothing changes for us.”

“I’m-- I think I need to--” she gets up from her chair. “I’m going to go. Is that okay?”

They nod and Margo bolts off back into the cottage.

“That went…” Eliot searches for a word and can’t seem to find it.

“It went,” Quentin agrees.

He keeps out of Margo’s way as best he can for the rest of the day, but she winds up seeking him out on her own the next morning, knocking on his bedroom door.

“Hey,” he says. “Um, how are you-- doing with everything?”

“I’m not-- going to start calling you dad or anything,” she says. “But I want your advice. On Brakebills. You were worried the first time about what would happen. But the Beast is dead and the McCallisters can’t do shit to me if Mom and Dad are alive. I’m in the clear for now, if I wanted to go. So do you think I should?”

If he says yes, Eliot will never forgive him. But if he says no…  His gut instinct is to say no, but he’s certain it’s a worried father’s reaction and not actual advice. He knows what Margo can do and to be able to learn how to control it now, instead of waiting? It makes  _ sense _ .

“I think you’d be the youngest person to ever attend Brakebills, so if you want that claim to fame, you should take it.”

“I’m serious, Q.”

“I think you should,” Quentin says. “I think you’re smart and powerful and you should learn what you can.”

“Are you staying?” Margo asks.

Quentin doesn’t have an answer to that, though he wishes he did. Margo nods in understanding, offers him the tiniest of smiles, and darts back out of his room.

* * *

_ Fray was alone, when Margo approached her with the odd revelation that somehow made complete sense: Quentin was Margo’s father. _

_ “I feel like if anyone was going to secretly turn out to be Quentin’s kid, it would be you. You know?” Margo said. _

_ Fray frowned, not sure she followed Margo’s logic _

_ “You’re so close,” Margo clarified. “And similar and you care about those books so much and… I mean, it just would’ve made more sense.” _

_ “If Quentin turned out to have been my biological father it wouldn’t change anything,” Fray said. “He’d be the exact same thing to me.” _

_ “You already kind of think of him as your dad, don’t you?” _

_ She did. Had for awhile, if she was honest about it. She was sure Margo and El felt it too, even if they didn’t consciously think about it that way. _

_ “Is it because things with actual-Dad are hard right now?” Margo asked. _

_ “No.” It was more than that. Coming to live with Quentin had been complicated, but it had also been a moment of true stability in the middle of the most chaotic years of her life and he had cared about them without ulterior motives. He didn’t want to throw them at a monster, he wasn’t obligated to care about them, he didn’t want to change them. He just loved them. “Quentin was there for us when Mom and Dad were gone and them being alive doesn’t suddenly change that.” _

_ “So what do you think I should do?” Margo asked. _

_ “Who says you have to do anything? So Q and Mom hooked up at some point. Weird, but that’s… Who cares? He’s the same Quentin. You’re the same Margo.” _

_ “Am I the same Margo?” she asked, sitting down on the bed across the Fray. “I don’t-- I mean first it was the wellspring and not being entirely human. And now I’m not-- I’m a Coldwater.” _

_ “Or a Cold _ waugh _ ter,” Fray said, giving Margo a wry grin. _

_ “That’s not helpful at all, thanks.” _

_ “Legally, you’re a Waugh. Legally, you’re also missing so I guess that’s not really the point. The point is, you’ve always been you, and that’s not changing just because you have crazy powers or your genetics are a little different than you thought they were. And yeah, I’m sure you’ll start seeing yourself in Quentin more but those things were already there. You’re just noticing now. You’re still you.” _

_ Margo sprang forward to hug Fray and Fray held her little sister tightly. “You’re always going to be Margo.” _

\--Excerpt “ _ The Missing Magicians _ ”, fifth book in the “ _ Wandering and Wonder _ ” series, by F. Coldwater

* * *

It’s summer and most of the students are gone, leaving them alone in the cottage. Margo and Fen set out on their quest to retake the throne in Fillory, occasionally making it back in time for Eliot’s home-cooked dinners, which is a thing that’s happening now. It’s still so strange and out of place, but Quentin falls into the routine of it anyway.

One night he joins the group downstairs just in time to hear El say, as a closing point to some argument they were having with Fray, “Remember how you tried to kill me?”

“What?” Quentin asks as he sits down.

“Fray tried to kill me like three times when we were little.”

“It was twice,” Fray corrects, indignant, “And I was very little.”

“That last time you were five and you tried to choke El in the middle of the hallway outside your kindergarten class,” Eliot says. “It was terrifying. Fen wasn’t there and I had Margo in a sling and I was trying to not crush her while pulling you apart. One of the teachers had to run out and break it up.”

Quentin wants to laugh but can’t figure out if that would be inappropriate or not, so he settles for hiding his grin behind his hand.

“I-- Regret it,” Fray says. “But also I was five. I just remember being really mad.”

“You asked us to take El back about once a day for the first three years until Margo came along and then you decided it was more fun to play with her than to pick on El. Which, thank God.”

Quentin gives up and laughs, maybe a little too loud, but it gets the rest of them laughing too and it’s so absurdly normal and it feels good to just laugh.

After dinner, Quentin volunteers to help clean up and he and Eliot wind up blustering around the kitchen together, magicking dishes clean and putting them all away.

“How are you?” Quentin asks suddenly. Both because he’s trying and also because questions about one of the weirder things about rescuing Eliot have been slowly forming in his mind. “Did Lipson ever figure out what woke you up in that dungeon? Because you were in a coma for three years and then suddenly I’m bleeding out next to you and you’re fine.”

Eliot spins away from Quentin to put away a plate, but Quentin catches a smile on his face anyway and he feels left out of a joke, and a little indignant about it. Eliot closes the cupboard and turns back to Quentin, face carefully composed, and he leans against the counter and drums his fingers on ledge, “It’s not-- I didn’t tell you because we haven’t been, you know. In the best of places.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You woke me up,” Eliot says. “Lipson looked me over and apparently there’s this unstudied branch of healing magic that’s only successfully been used in bursts of intense emotion. Like battle magic, but ten times the emotions required and it’s incredibly powerful, which is why I recovered so fast, afterward. It should’ve taken me a week to even stand on my own, let alone carry you and El around and everything else that’s happened. But you healed me.”

Quentin didn’t do anything. He’d just been bleeding out and crying and apologizing. It wasn’t magic, it was grief.

Eliot sees the gears turning in Quentin’s head and adds, simply, “You kissed me,” like it was the most logical explanation in the world and not insane. A kiss isn’t magic and that kiss had been pent-up emotions and ten years of pining and--  _ Oh. _

“Bullshit,” Quentin shakes his head. This is the stuff of fairy tales. It’s not-- Magic like that isn’t real.

“Come on, Q, think about it,” Eliot says, gently, stepping closer to Quentin. “There’s sex magic and secrets magic and magic quests about the beauty of all life. Why not true love’s kiss too?”

“Don’t--” Quentin pulls back.

“Motherfucking true love’s kiss,” Eliot breathes, reverently.

Quentin looks away.

“I know it’s bad timing and you’re still pissed at me and that’s fine. I know I deserve it. Stay pissed at me. But now you know what it was.” 

Even as Quentin is trying to mentally talk himself out of it, the knowledge of it feels right. He knows he loves Eliot, still, even after all this time. And now just seeing Eliot will be walking proof of it.

“Q,” Eliot calls his name, dragging him out of his thoughts. “I’m sorry. I wish things were different.”

“Me too,” Quentin says and he means it.

He excuses himself, still sorting through his thoughts, still too caught up in the emotion of it all. He makes his way outside and spots Fray sitting on the patio. Eager to shove his own emotions down and deal with someone else’s, he darts over to sit down next to her.

“How’s it going with your parents?

Fray lets out a tiny yelp, jumping and whipping around, flushing, a cigarette between her fingers.

“Oh! Okay, so, we should talk about this?” Quentin eyes the cigarette. “Where’d you even get that?”

“Um, there was a huge stash of them underneath one of the seats in the cottage.”

“You don’t smoke. I’ve never seen you smoke and you’re also not even seventeen.”

“I do now, which should answer the ‘How’s it going with your parents?’ question.”

“I think I’ve got something to help with that,” Quentin says. “Put that out and then walk with me?”

He takes her into the main house of the campus, up to a corner he remembers finding years ago when he was a student there, powers on the old dinosaur of a computer and pulls out the chair for Fray.

“This is the computer lab,” Quentin says. “I got online yesterday to check emails and apparently being an already elusive author and then disappearing is great for book sales, but bad for having a good relationship with your publisher.”

“And…?”

“I’m contracted for one more book and after that they probably won’t want to work with me again. I’ve been kind of a difficult writer to manage. But, um, I was thinking of changing it. This last book. The fourth book ended with you dying and talking to Penny so the next step would be...”

“Everything that’s happened since we came to live with you.”

Quentin nods. “I think you should write it.”

“Me?” Fray’s jaw drops a little.

“I’m  _ in  _ the story now. I don’t want to write about you meeting me from your perspective. It’s weird. I tried for about two hours last night and I couldn’t do it. This is your story. It’s time you tell it yourself.”

Quentin gestures to the desk chair and Fray sits down  in it, mesmerized.

“Writing the books helped me process a lot. Not everything, but maybe it’ll help you.”

Fray stares at the screen for a moment, then begins to type.

* * *

 

_ The Library was somehow exactly what Fray expected it to look like. The Man in the Underworld’s (whose name she would later learn was Penny) instructions were clear on where to go to locate their parents book, but there was nothing to be found. They searched nearby shelves just in case and finally gave up. Margo found a spell book that would serve her well enough to create a portal and they snuck off to an empty conference room. _

_ Margo calculated the circumstances for awhile, puzzling over what the positioning of the moon was in a place that theoretically existed outside of traditional Earth time standards, but she eventually figured something out and sat on the ground, crossing her legs with the book in her lap. She mimed the tuts a few times before she began to chant, focusing on the door. _

_ Within moments, it began to glow a soft golden light. _

_ Fray leaned over, keeping a careful eye on Margo, nervous about the spell going wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time. _

_ “Stop hovering, Fray, it’s going to work,” Margo said, fingers still moving. She closed her eyes and moved her fingers faster, murmuring something in a language Fray couldn’t quite pick up. _

_ The portal glowed brighter and then suddenly a man stepped through it: middle aged, floppy brown hair falling into his face. He was instantly familiar and though Fray couldn’t place him, she knew who this had to be. _

_ “Quentin Coldwater?” _

\--Excerpt “ _ The Missing Magicians _ ”, fifth book in the “ _ Wandering and Wonder _ ” series, by F. Coldwater

* * *

Fray dedicates herself to writing the last Wandering and Wonder book with an intense fervor and Quentin is delighted to email his publisher with the news that he’s letting F. Coldwater take over the writing for him. He assures them he’ll get out of their hair immediately following the release of the book, but that there’s literally nothing they could do to make him write it himself.

He’s got his own things to work through and while writing about the kids brought him comfort in his search for them, it doesn’t resolve things with Eliot. Talking might and they’ve been talking more, when they can: strolling on the lawns as Quentin gets more of his strength back or sitting together in the cottage while the rest of the family is in Fillory (save Margo, who’s hard at work putting together her high-school-and-graduate-school curriculum plan).

“Do you  _ want  _ to go back to Fillory?” Quentin asks one evening as they’re cleaning up after dinner. “Or is it just Fen and Margo?”

“I feel-- I thought that was where I was going to spend the rest of my life. And it feels right, it feels like home,” Eliot says.

Quentin softens a bit, at that. 

“What about you?” Eliot asks, then rushes to add, “Not pressuring you into making a decision either way. Just asking as someone who cares about you and knows you have some choices to make.”

“Sometimes it feels like it would be like going home and sometimes it feels like it would be reliving my worst memories constantly.”

“That checks out,” Eliot says. He’s quiet for a moment, then looks at Quentin. “If you don’t go to Fillory, I’m going to stay here with you.”

Quentin stares, at a loss of how to respond. Eliot can’t-- It’s Fillory. It’s home.

“It’s not about the place, it’s about family and you’re my family. If you’re here, I’m sure Fray won’t want to leave. Little Margo has Brakebills which I am  _ trying  _ to accept. El can be wherever they want, whenever they want. And I know Fen and Margo have Fillory’s shit on lock, so it’s not like I’m abandoning Fillory. I know what I want and I want my family. I want you. And I fucked that up, but I-- Look, if you want me to leave, I will, but until then I’m going to be right here with you.”

Quentin kisses him on impulse, then pulls back to see that Eliot looks both confused and blissed out, blinking a few times at him, a hint of a smile on his lips.

“So what?” Quentin asks. “We just go for this?”

“I know it’s not all better, Q, but we’ve had years to think on it,” Eliot says. “We had time to think about what happened. About who we are, about what we want. We’ve changed. But whether I see you every Tuesday or a decade goes by, I love you, Q.”

And that’s it, isn’t it? No matter what, no matter how long they’ve been apart, they love each other, no matter how messy it gets. Quentin’s tired of being angry, tired of pushing away, tired of missing Eliot even though he’s right here, “Okay.”

“That’s it, just ‘okay’ and...?”

“I don’t want to spend the rest of my life angry at you. It happened, it’s over, and I forgive you, if you can forgive me.”

“There’s nothing to--”

Quentin cuts him off, “I got blinded by revenge and it put our family in danger. That’s on me and I’m saying I’m sorry.”

Eliot nods, slowly. “And I shouldn’t have left you, Q. I got scared of myself and of you and I ran. I’m so sorry.”

It’s not enough and it’s more than enough and they’ve lost so much time already, Quentin kisses Eliot again and Eliot kisses him back. It’s not fixed, but it’s something and it’s good and it’s more than enough for now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoops theres also an epilogue


	7. Part the Seventh

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> part the last

Eliot stays.

Fogg finally kicks them out of the cottage when classes start in the fall, but there’s an empty teachers’ apartment attached to the main building. It’s small and studio-sized, which results in he and Eliot sharing a room and a bed again. They probably would’ve done it regardless, but the apartment certainly helps move things along.

Eliot and El travel back and forth between Fillory and Earth regularly. At the end of the day, Eliot spends most of his time at Brakebills with Quentin, whenever Quentin isn’t occupied helping Fray write the last book.

Mini-Margo becomes Welters captain, at which point El travels to Fillory to deliver the news and returns with RSVPs for her first match the following Thursday, making it a full-on family outing.

A week later, the six of them sit shoulder to shoulder and take up an entire row in the stadium. El stands on the outside, followed by Margo, Fen, Fray, Quentin, and lastly Eliot on the other end.

Mini-Margo wears her Welters uniform, hands on her hips, yelling at a twenty-four year old student twice her size, and she looks  _ delighted _ .

“Not sure how a child of Quentin, raised by Fen and me could somehow be  _ your  _ genetic duplicate, but congratulations,” Eliot says.

Margo grin at him, then goes full soccer-mom and shouts, hands cupped around her mouth, “Kick their fucking asses, Margo!”

Mini-Margo looks over her shoulder and gives a thumbs up.

Her team wins, naturally, with loud cheers from her namesake thundering across the stadium the entire time. The game is thrilling, but there’s so much care that goes into it. She’s focused, calculating variables at lighting-speed, and her tuts are in perfect form. Quentin feels a swell of pride over how much she’s learned. She casts spells he never would’ve dreamed of at twice her age and she’s confident as hell about it, baring her teeth in a grin and most definitely unsettling her opposition.

As she takes the last square, her teammates and Margo let out loud whoops and Mini-Margo is promptly carried out of the stadium on the shoulders of her celebrating teammates. Quentin and the others rush to catch up with her before she’s too swept away by adoring fans and she jumps into Margo’s arms as soon as she sees them. Then quickly gets in hugs with the rest of her family. 

“You’re fucking amazing,” Margo says, straightening out the collar of Mini-Margo’s outfit.

She preens, grinning ear-to-ear, and lets the rest of her family shower her with compliments.

They go out to dinner and the waitress seems to be working incredibly hard to figure out their family dynamics and who’s related to whom, but she finally gives up and instead offers them free dessert on account of Margo’s generic “sports victory” that they refused to explain beyond that.

It’s a good night and one that all of them will remember for a long time.

A few months later, Quentin and Fray publish the last book, which receives largely mixed responses, due to a tonally inconsistent ending.

“Okay, I get the criticism, but there’s a whole perspective shift and the doom and gloom that narrator-you promised didn’t happen because the narrator changed,” Fray says, annoyed while reading an Amazon review even though Quentin told her several times that she shouldn’t. “Anyway, isn’t a twist happy ending kind of revolutionary? I mean, at the very least it’s way better than those stories that just get weird and dark all of a sudden.”

With the series finished, the last of Quentin’s pressing ties to Earth disappears and Fray’s too, really. But Eliot isn’t pushing him to go and Margo isn’t pushing him to stay and so Quentin just lets himself enjoy the inbetween of it all. He has family and he has a home, even if it’s not a coherent, physical place.

Fillory feels like it’s calling them more every day and maybe they’ll get there, eventually, but for now, the inbetween is more than enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoo okay. thanks for sticking with me for this long. this is the first longform story I've written in ages and it's been a blast. thank you for all the lovely comments over the last couple of months


End file.
